A Shape-Shifter's Drabbles
by ATOPN
Summary: Envy-centric drabbles with a variety of characters (from both FMA and FMA Brotherhood)
1. Canvas part 1

Non-Brotherhood-verse

I keep starting Envy related stories and then loosing interest so I thought I'd put them up as drabbles. I'm not sure how popular pairings are with Envy but if any chapter seems particularly well-liked I'd be happy to develop it into a larger fic, so please, let me know what you think.

* * *

"Next up. Item 43"

The diminutive state alchemist sighed, yawned stretched, repeated – flicking open his military issue silver alchemists pocket watch to glance at the face hiding beneath the morbidly engraved lid.

"6 more minutes" Ed yawned out, the helmet that was his little brothers head squeaking a bit as it swiveled to stare unblinkingly at him for a moment, before returning to face forward.

"I can't wait to see it!" The small voice echoed from within its armored prison, a happy note present in his voice. Al might have found the whole thing fascinating, but to Ed this whole assignment had been little but a bore. The Full Metal Alchemist glanced around at the other various state alchemists that had been snapped up at a moments notice and posted two to each door around the grand auditorium in which they stood. At least they all looked bored too.

Guard posts weren't something state alchemists where usually reduced to – their abilities in the transmutation and weaponization of nearly every material on earth propelling them far beyond the level of simple hired muscle that should be working this job, but apparently the situation had the highbrows at central HQ tense.

"Going once"

"Going twice"

"Sold!"

**Slam**

Glancing around at the auctions patrons, Ed would say the event was anything but tense. It was like a rich persons cheap humor – the massive room swallowing up the well-dressed and well-bred individuals that had come for the 'excitement' of an evening filled with potentially acquiring more possessions. Most where fat. Old and wrinkled – a woman sitting close to him so decorated in lavished jewels it was a surprise she could even move her fingers under the weight of so many rings… regardless, no number of shiny rocks was going to distract the average human from her massive jowls.

Many rows in front of the apparently wealthy widow sat the reason the state alchemists had been deployed in such force – Fuhrer King Bradley – who's original intention had been to attend the auction for his own pleasure as the wealthy gentleman he was on the weekends, not as the head of state – but the auction had spooked a few too many within the military and as such a small contingent of whoever was hanging around headquarters at 6pm on a Saturday afternoon had been rounded up and deployed to guard the man… who in all likeliness had thusly just had his peaceful weekend ruined. As always the Fuhrer smiled onwards like a contented lucky cat, either immune to or steadfastly ignoring the presence of his well-meaning subordinates as they subtly flanked him on all sides.

"Next Item: Number 44…"

Yet it wasn't the location of the auction, the timing of the auction or the persons attending the auction that necessarily had central headquarters fearing their Fuhrer's presence there… of all things to stoke up paranoia, it was a mere item to be auctioned that had them so concerned.

Listed as item number 45, the painting in question had developed over time a rather fitting nickname. "The cursed canvas". In the three hundred years it had been recorded to have been drifting around Amestria, it had accumulated an impressive total of 97 owners, every single one of them having passed away… sometimes within on hours of acquiring the infamous piece. Amongst the art world was apparently revered as a sort of legendary icon of art – its history apparently proving to malnourished artists everywhere the true and mysterious power of paintings. In truth… its bloody history was something far less mysterious than an otherworld curse – in factuality really being nothing more than a string of elaborate murders, suicides and thefts.

It was in this detail that half the alchemists in Amestris had been sent to their leaders side as he attended an otherwise normal auctions as he apparently often did when such things where occurring. Part of the legend of the painting was that numerous times over a hundred years or so, its murderous instigator or would be thief had been spotted in the act… and every time it was a notably different individual… Sometimes a young man, sometimes a woman – but always agile and dexterous and never any older than their mid-twenties. It had last appeared at action eight years ago according to reports, the piece having been bought up by some nameless old woman for the no-doubt appalling empty walls of her mansion and it had remained conspicuously out of the publics eye since… however in the auction preceding that it was claimed a skillful thief had appeared to steal the piece in the middle of the proceedings, the ensuing incident of attempting to stop its escape wounding 5 auction-goers and outright killing the auctioneer.

Fearing the work to be that of an overly aggressive cult, ridiculously enthusiastic art-lover or simple mad man Ed now awaited the item to be revealed and sold without incident. After that he and Al could go home. Golden eyes slid over to regard his brother, the suit of armor almost bouncing in his seat from the excitement – Al had heard of the painting before apparently, the effect of bringing him to see it with his own _eyes_ like bringing an rabid fan to meet a celebrity. The unveiling did nothing to interest Ed himself.

"Its up next brother!" Al chimed, knitting his hands together in his iron lap to contain himself in the room.

"So what's it even a painting of?" Ed questioned with a sigh. Seeing his brother riled was wonderful… but he'd much rather be studying the books they pulled from Central HQ earlier in the evening.

"I don't know, its supposed to be a man's face" Al replied joyfully, glancing this way and that as a pair of handy men appeared to lift up the apparently somewhat large painting onto the stand that stood beside the auctioneer's podium.

"You don't know?" The elder Elric questioned with near disbelief.

"I've only ever read about it, they don't print pictures of it in any book cos the printing presses say reproducing it will bring bad luck."

"Man." Ed sighed. This thing sure had a lot of mythos and dogma nipping at it's heels

"I wonder if anyone will buy it" Al continued

"Its in an auction, so I guess so."

"It's shown up in three auctions in as many weeks, apparently no one wants it after its previous owner was found …"

Al trailed off, the story of the elderly woman's body chopped strewn across the lounge of her mansion within a ritualistic circle of some sort not bearing being spoken into the air of such a public place. Ed frowned, apparently in understanding.

"Yeah, I get what you mean" He confirmed with a slow nod.

"Next item, number 45!" the auctioneer announced, pulling back the heavy curtain covering the painting to reveal it to his audience "This acrylic painting, thought to be Xerzian in origin" - Ed sniggered, claiming anything to be Xerzian in origin was like saying it had been made by pixies, or sneezed out by unicorn "the writing on the back of the canvas suggesting it was intended to commemorate it's subjects 18th birthday."

An eerie silence slipped over the demure but previously at least somewhat lively auditorium as the face behind the drape was revealed, the whole room seeming to take a united deep inward breath.

Well, it certainly wasn't what Ed had been expecting either.

From within the frame smiled out at them a young man's face, far from the disturbing visage that would cause people to go instantaneously and gloriously mad upon a single glance and kill each other. The man was, as Winry would have described him 'dashing', his flowing golden blonde hair and regal features noble, handsome, benevolent. The man's strong broad chin was counter-pointed by his small but nevertheless soft eyes, the eyes in question crinkled youthful at their corners as his mouth curved upwards to give the man a gentle, genuine and never-ending smile. The artist had been very good, seeming to capture the subjects very essence alive and pin it to a blank face of canvas, yet was also realistic in his depiction of the fairy tale prince-like man.

"He looks kinda sick…" Ed heard Al mutter from beside him, his brothers strange and near disconcerting reflection of his own thoughts as apt as ever. Ed hummed in agreement.

Under the beauty, elegance and congeniality of the man, something else seemed to lurk, peering up at them from the surface of his skin like the subject had been painted from life… but only after covered in a powdery sheen of makeup. Under his eyes, paled-out but overly large pits of purple stained with fatigue or illness the illusion of health the painter had been attempting to impose upon his painting, the slightly too deep shadows of his face suggesting the man may also have been gaunter in a manner more drastic than his face would normally be.

… It made the whole thing seem a little tragic. It was the face of a man who at first glance could have been straight from a children's novel about princes and dragons smiling placating back at the artist… but at second glance (as his painter had clearly noticed and subtly attempted to include his subjects apparent lack of health) his gaze seemed not happy, but sympathetic… gentle and consoling… sad but determined to hide it… as if telling the painter that it was ok.

"_Its alright, Father, I'll be fine" His beloved son whispered faintly, his features softening in gentle grief as the young man noticed instantly the silent tears that tracked down his father's face. The paintbrush of Hohenheim of the light stood motionless against the empty canvas yet the hand that held it trembled… knowing that for all his son's encouraging words… his boy was not going to be alright..._

Ed recognized that expression.

"Like mom…" Al murmured.

Ed nodded, a lump in his throat suddenly preventing him from humming.

Allowing a dramatic pause for effect, the auctioneer cleared his throat before continuing "The artist is a 'Perelius Hoen… Who-an…Howeenhim?" the man continued questioningly, glancing down at the small card he held apparently describing the item, but not helping with pronunciation. "Lets start the bidding at 100. Do I have 100?" The auctioneer continued.

"Did he say – "

"Hohenheim?!"

"Perelius Hohenheim?" Ed questioned, glancing to Al to stared back at him equally curious and perhaps even more dumbfounded. Ed preferred not to dwell on his Father at all, but the sudden realization he was unsure of what the name of his paternal grandfather was struck him like thunder. No, this painting was older than that; its artist would have to be his great great grandfather at best…

The auditorium remained resolutely silent.

"100?" The auctioneer pressed again.

The response remained the same

"Brother, we should get it!" Al whispered hurriedly.

"what?! Com'on Al, where we gonna put a painting?" Ed responded skeptically, though his curiosity over the item kept any distain or accusation from his tone.

"I don't know…" Al admitted before hastily adding "But brother, it was done by a Hohenhiem!"

"We can't afford it!" Ed declared a little louder than necessary

"Then offer something lower, no body else seems to want it!" Al argued, the situation quickly turning too brotherly bickering.

A chuckle stopped the brother's abruptly, the two gazing around in mirror of each other to notice that the whole auditorium had turned to stare at their banter. With the otherwise oppressive silence of the room it was no surprise their raised voices had attracted attention.

"Now boys-" The chuckle continued, the disarmingly soft tone of the Fuhrer floating with purpose across the other patrons "-there's no need for that"

Ed and Al froze up like a pair of deer squabbling in the middle of headlights as the apparently rather amused Fuhrer turned to the auctioneer.

"I'll take it for 200" He announced – his voice never louder than that of a doting father yet somehow able to span the whole length of the room and be heard without difficulty. Such was the power of the great King Bradley.

The auctioneer gulped, glanced around the room and nodded as no response from anyone else was given.

"Corporal-" The man added, glancing towards a young soldier to his left who instantly saluted to attention and began quivering like a leaf under his leaders single eyed-gaze "Have the painting wrapped up and transported to the Elric's quarters"

"YES SIR!" Barked the younger man, his indoor voice apparently failing him under his leaders amiable smile.

"The rest of you are dismissed, now that the threat to my safety has been dealt with" Bradley finished with, a good-natured laugh bellowing from his lips and he waved off the rest of the troupes scattered haphazardly around the room – a number of relieved sighs littering the air.

From behind his mustache and human face, Pride grinned mercilessly. Oh yes, this was going to drive Envy mad.

Or well, madder.


	2. Birth

Brotherhood-verse

* * *

The newborn sin was not much to look at.

It yowled and wailed like an agitated cat, it's 'head' peaking out from the pastel blue towel they'd found to swaddle it in.

Lust - as the one currently holding the mewling bundle of noise - perhaps looked the most murderous while glaring down at it, the narrowed disembodied eyes of Pride leering from the shadows coming in a close second but perhaps slightly less irked as at least he could leave the room.

As for Greed himself… well, he was laughing as loud as the squeaky tearful thing was caterwauling. This was it? This thing was their new sibling Father had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of? Hilarious!

"Jeeze. It doesn't even look like a homunculus" Greed stammered through his hysterics, wiping away an amused tear from forming in his left eye before continuing to guffaw at Lust's scandalized expression.

"Lust!" Pride hissed, his voice echoing from every direction as he remained resolutely spying from the shadows "Silence that thing now!"

"How?" Lust snapped back, apparently not in a rush to search herself for anything remotely resembling motherly instincts – perhaps even offended that she had been tasked with holding the hideous thing for just that reason by the rest of her decidedly male family.

"Shut it up, or I'll kill it! Then we'll see how homunculus it is!" Pride sneered with ferocity.

It was a subject of much debate what indeed 'it' was. Certainly it was not normal, and unlike the rest of homunculus who were born into developed bodies with their minds and education fully prepared, this thing seemed to lack both, behaving with startling similarity to a human infant.

"Find me something to plug it's mouth shut with then" Lust replied curtly, the patience and respect she would usually show her eldest sibling slipping under the duress of the enormous never-ending noise the tiny thing in the towel continued to make.

"y-you can't" Greed managed to gasp out between sniggers " It hasn't got a nose, it'll suffocate". Indeed it didn't. it had no nostrils, no ears, no neck even, it was just some weird little green blob with two bulbous teary eyes that had remained closed since it's birth like a newborn puppy with far too many 'arms'.

"Good." Lust might have muttered under her breath. It was hard to tell over the sound of 'Envy's' bawling.

"Enough of this!" Pride announced from around them, their eldest sibling's short temper predictably being the first to snap. From the darkest corner of the room a spike of pure black lunged forward, impaling the green thing with savage enthusiasm before retracting into nothingness.

All noise in the room abruptly stopped. Even Greed's own laughter suddenly fell short as the previously sky blue towel nesting in the crook of Lust's arm became quickly over run with the color red.

A familiar red lightening flashed around the room: the illumination that mercifully accompanied the regeneration of a homunculus.

From beside him Greed heard Lust release a long exhale of bated breathe; even with Pride as the one to commit the murder, had their new sibling proven in-homunculus and stayed 'dead' Father would have brutally punished them all.

"Then it is one of us after all." Pride's echoing voice scoffed from all around them.

Greed shrugged, surprised by the revelation but not enough to really care.

"Even so, what use will it be to Father?" Lust questioned, an odd blend of curiosity and distain ripe in her tone as she gazed down at the restored lump of Envy. Though tears remained heavy in it's eyes from it's previous crying, it's eyelids were now open, staring upwards with tiny purple irises into her own with muted wide-eyed terror. Clearly the pain of death had given it a suitable incentive to learn silence. "-It cant even speak".

"Well it isn't like you really gave it a chance" Greed drawled lazily, stooping closer to get a better look at the new youngest homunculus. The being in question noticed something approaching it and flinched in fear, it's body curling in on itself slightly as if fearing another attack… Which it probably was.

Greed groaned, straightening and scratching the back of his head "Pride, why'd you have to go and do that. Now it's scared shitless…Not literally" He added, noticing the engaged expression cross Lust's face as she snapped her head around to glare at the thing.

"Hey?" Greed resumed, poking the green homunculus forcefully on the top of it's head as it hid it's face further into the now scarlet towel as if attempting to burrow down into it. Gross. it felt sort of overly soft and squishy, like jabbing the waxy skin of a banana that had long since gone mushy and rotten on the inside.

It's only reaction was to shiver and begin to quake in Lust's arms, trembling as forcefully as it's tiny body could manage.

Greed tried again, his second poke eliciting a very different response as the head it had been trying to disguise suddenly reared up, it's tiny yet apparently razor sharp teeth latching onto the invading finger and refusing to let go, even as said finger (and indeed Greed's whole hand) was retracted from the toweling and waved wildly around in the air in a hapless attempt to dislodge the attacker.

"-OW! Little shit!"

Pride laughed gleefully from the shadows as Lust took a step forward as if to help extract their new sibling from Greed before apparently thinking better of it and stalling. Rather Greed than her.

"Get Off!"

Releasing an exasperated sigh Greed's elder sister thought twice of simply letting Greed and Envy figure it out. Anything that made Pride laugh so joyfully was bound to end in tragedy.

Intervening swiftly, with a single graceful step as fluid as water and refined as ballet the Ultimate Spear swept into Greed's personal space, latched her claws around Envy and slipped away again – taking the parasitic homunculus and a large chunk of Greed's hand away with her.

In the background Greed swore repeatedly and healed as Lust deposited the little green Envy that she was now substantially more reluctant to touch on the top of a nearby table. It squirmed and writhed against the abruptly cold surface of the tabletop before stilling to gaze up at her blankly, it's innocent expression somehow disturbing while the blood of the now-dissolved part of Greed's hand it had ripped off stained all around it's maw.

"You little bitch!" Greed declared, jabbing his finger aggressively into the air in Envy's direction. Pointing would apparently have to be a suitable substitute for poking.

"Hahaha! Now Greed," Pride jeered unseen "- Do try and get along with our new brother"

"Brother?! Just cos it's damn ugly doesn't mean it cant be female!"

"Be quiet." Lust's sultry voice commanded from beside him, her gaze narrow and fixated on the little worm now sat atop the mantelpiece. Following her eye line, Greed too saw what it was that had attracted her attention.

Though he still remained pointing threateningly at the little runt he now had the pleasure of being related to, it had righted itself from the prone position it had been deposited in to sit back onto it's tail, as if upright, while the top left of it's many hands had been extended forward, it's finger pointing at Greed in an exact mirror of the elder homunculus's gesture.

"So?" Greed shrugged.

It shrugged too…. Sort of. It clearly couldn't rotate or move it's shoulders very well but it managed a sort of odd wiggle.

"Eh?" Greed questioned, his arm snaking up once more to scratch at his head.

Well it really couldn't do that one; it's stumpy arms couldn't reach that far, but it tired as hard as it could to copy.

Momentarily amused with the predicament, Greed took on a variety of poses: arms crossed, hands on hips, even clapping; watching each time as the little worm wobbled unbalanced as it's top heavy body found it hard to stay sat upright on it's tail, but otherwise copied.

Lust tried too, snapping her claws in front of Envy's eyes to catch it's attention, then gesticulating demurely positions that would prove a little easier for the newborn homunculus to imitate in a rare show of mercy. After watching her for some minutes the little green thing seemed to conclude it would follow Greed, or no one at all. Dismissing Lust, it turned back to gaze up at the homunculus it now recognized as Greed and await his next action.

"Well that's all fun and all" the avaricious homunculus summarized, chortling somewhat after managing to get his little green sibling to slap itself in the face with it's apparently foolhardy attempt to replicate him as best it could "-But what's the old man thinking? He'll create the Ultimate Earthworm… and it's special power is the ancient and mysterious art of mime?".

"Silence fool!" Pride barked from the walls "Father's plans are beyond your meager comprehension!"

"Do you know what it is meant to be then Pride? Has Father told you?" Lust questioned, genuine curiosity in her voice as she addressed her question to the ceiling right in front of her still somewhat taken aback by their new sibling's blatant favoritism.

"No" Pride replied, his unhesitant answer laced with defensive aggression, daring anyone to challenge his intellect or closeness to Father; topics both Lust and Greed had learnt long ago never to mention.

"But…" The first homunculus continued, a calmer and more insidious tone that sent shivers down the spines of any who heard it replacing the threat of his previous one "-As it seems to have taken a liking to Greed, I have suggested you take care of it, little Brother." A set of teeth held aloft in the dark corner of the room curled into a malevolent gin. "Father agrees".

"How wise" Lust echoed with a small seductive grin of her own, taking that moment to slink from the room before the allocation of responsibility could be reconsidered and potentially pinned on her.

Lingering a moment to soak up the fastidious expression that colored Greed's face, Pride also seemingly receded from the room… though it was always impossible to tell for sure when and where the arrogant homunculus chose to come and go.

"Damnit".

Father had expressed distaste at his recent activities. Spending every moment in which he was not assigned a task (and sometimes the moment's in-between) drinking, partying, laughing or sleeping with the more interesting human morsels that dotted the surface of Central's red light district was apparently shameful to the paternal homunculus. While Greed had taken entertaining his sin to the utmost extent he could while still appearing to be sat securely under Fathers thumb, both father and son understood a rebellion was growing inside the third-born homunculus. Yes, this particular shackle would prove effective in reining him in for a little while at least, but it was still only a matter of time…

And so it was.

000

When Envy was the size of his hand, Greed discovered it did not share many similarities to the rest of their family.

Having been silent from the time of it's first death it took a week for Greed to realize that the thing's fussiness, silent crying and attention-seeking wriggling was some vague attempt to communicate that it was hungry.

The idea was ludicrous of course.

Father, Lust, Pride and himself – though perfectly capable of partaking in on a whim – did not need food, water, sleep or even sexual gratification. After all, eating when one is on the brink of starving to death is not gluttony; sleeping when one's insomnia brings them to the brink of madness is not sloth and indulging in ones sexuality when the instinctive, animalistic need arises is not lust. No, to be gluttonous, one must eat when they do not physically need to, to be lusty one must wish to indulge in carnal desires even when they are already sated; it was the nature of the homunculi not to NEED anything. Being physically content but desiring their individual vices anyway was the very nature of sin.

But Envy was different… both as a concept and an individual.

As a concept, 'Envy' was more like 'Pride'; not characterized by a desire for something –food, sleep, sex, possessions, vengeance – but by a feeling that if not quickly squashed out by the good-wishes of the human mind would grow poisonous and detrimental to both the feeling's owner, and those around them.

As an individual, Envy was perhaps the most 'different' thing Greed had ever seen.

"You want me to steal a baby's what?"

"It's a lip-less leech. How else is anyone supposed to feed it?"

"It needs 'feeding?'"

"It keeps dying, then reviving, then dying again for no reason. Its the only idea I've got left."

"You believe it's starving?" Lust questioned

Greed shrugged.

"Dunno, but at the moment its dead then sparking alive then dead again so often it might as well be reclassified from being homunculus to a night-light."

The moment the nib of the milk-filled baby bottle had been pressed across it's maw it shied had away, gazing up at Greed as he brandished the bottle disorientated and confused. It took a moment of cursing the thing and jabbing the bottle in it's 'face' before the notion that it may very well not possess the suckling instinct of a mammal dawned upon him.

Greed was no scientist or brainbox, but it occurred to him 'it' might not even BE a mammal.

Fortunately, by drawing the thing's attention and first enacting it himself, Envy's natural disposition towards imitation soon had it sucking enthusiastically like an eager calve at the bottle's literal tit.

Watching Greed demonstrate kept Pride in mockingly high-spirits for weeks afterwards; he had watched the whole thing.

It also slept – regularly. Not just relaxed or got bored and rested; it slept as if it needed to do so. Greed experimented with it, keeping it awake all night one evening by poking it whenever it's bulbous eyes closed to do more than just blink.

Every time it had startled back awake, too tired to bother trying to bite Greed again but fixing him with a helpless look of confusion nevertheless.

Each time, within minutes, it's eyes would slowly begin to close again, it's head nodding into it's 'chest' as it lost consciousness once more. Eventually, as dawn neared and the week-old homunculus had been denied rest for the first time, it's eyes actually began to water with tears as Greed jolted it awake, seeking his own out with a glassy pleading look of hurt.

At the night's beginning Greed's intention to keep it awake had been resolute. It was only fair after all. If he couldn't be out drinking and socializing the night away, the little shit sure as hell wasn't gonna get to sleep…

But that look.

"Fucking all those humans is turning me soft" The avaricious homunculus grinned to himself.

He gave in as the sun started to rise over Central; allowing the infant homunculus to fall into exhausted sleep. It awoke a day later irritable and dazed and stayed that way for many days afterward.

Envy did indeed physically need sleep, Greed concluded.

Perhaps reacting directly to the smallest sibling's maltreatment or possibly out of pure boredom, Greed soon after began receiving help from his elder sister were Envy was concerned.

In the beginning Lust had been quite adamant that the assignment was Greed's own and it was neither her place nor her intent to intervene. Though near overnight Envy's care and education became a sort of habitual way to pass the time for the older sins, the burden of teaching it the skills it would need as an agent of Father somehow without any formal communication ended up divided equally.

Though first only ever demonstrating the desire to copy it's avaricious elder brother the elders quickly recognized the younger homunculus's ability to learn went far beyond mere physical gesture.

Using the time-honored technique of flashcards and pointing, Lust demonstrated shapes, colors and numbers – the names, appearances and distinctions between each one quickly absorbed and demonstrated by the little Envy – who became even more eager to learn when it's correct answer was praised.

Simple mathematics proved somewhat harder, the littlest sin managing to grasp the concept of additional and subtraction, but only turning to it's sister and staring up balefully when anything resembling a multiplication or division sign appeared in it's sum. As much as it loved answering correctly, it despised it's mistakes.

Greed meanwhile worked to teach Envy to read; it's arms too short to bother tormenting it with any attempt to actually write. Though it still steadfastly refused to utter a single syllable on pain of death - no matter how many times it's older bother and sister assured it that it would not be stabbed for doing so –Envy's comprehension of both their own words and the written words of books increased with every passing lesson.

Even Pride (who when asked would expressly deny and ridicule the idea) had taken to secretly watching and occasionally 'helping' their littlest sibling in a morosely backward manner all of his own: stealing for Envy books detailing the human anatomy with which Pride could demonstrate his favorite – and therefore: the best – ways to murder human scum. More than once Greed also happened upon Pride feeding Envy bits of meat and scraps of dead rats "To give it a taste for flesh!" Pride had sneered maliciously.

Greed made a habit of not allowing Envy to be left alone from then on, the runty sin going everywhere his elder brother did sat upon Greed's broad shoulders.

It was perhaps because of it's new day-to-day location atop the elder sin that Greed eventually noticed nearing a month after it's birth by far the strangest thing yet about his new little sibling.

"I swear this thing's getting heavier."

Envy was growing.

By the time Envy was the size of a dog,

The eight green paw-like stumps that had lined each side of it's body had lengthened, grown stronger and developed hints of bone and muscle structure- the previously shapeless appendages forming into two pairs of arms and legs, leaving behind the baby fat of the chubby ill-defined limbs they had resembled at it's birth.

It had also begun to grow it's own face: currently sort of squashed and lizard-like in appearance, like a gecko that had run face first into a wall at high speed.

It's preferred method of movement had altered somewhat too. Far from the ineffectual crawl of it's first days, it now took to a sort of scurrying scuttle as it bounded happily after it's elder brother, Greed knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that wherever he went Envy would only be a maximum of ten paces behind.

From sleeping in a sock in Greed's room to dozing in his bed – as Greed himself rarely used it – the two had been near inseparable for far too long a time not to have left a significant imprint on the newest homunculus's developing mind. Often Greed would notice their littlest sibling still staring longingly at his shoulder – remembering the days were that was it's place but having since been disciplined that at it's current size and weight Envy was not to touch anyone without their permission. Greed was a rare exception.

It had also long been established that whenever Greed left Envy would sit at the entrance to their subterranean home motionless and dutifully wait.

Envy – understanding it was not allowed out of Father's underground domain – was always the first sight that greeted Greed as he returned home, the green sin's vivid violet eyes watching for him, staring after Greed's dark silhouette on the horizon of the hallway but unable to cross the invisible metaphorical barrier that represented how far Envy could explore without being punished. Thusly when the brother it would wait for sometimes days on end for finally rematerialized Envy instead consigning itself to sitting very still and wagging it's tail like an over excited Labrador as it's avaricious sibling came back into view before scrambling as high up the leg of Greed's trousers as it could manage when he was finally close enough to do so.

It was a sort of odd relationship to have with ones little sibling – all were aware that Envy was not yet developed enough to be seen as one of 'them', yet too intelligent and expressive to be dismissed as a mere pet.

So strange was it for Envy to not be either trotting by Greed's heels or lounging around Lust for attention when it's brother was otherwise occupied that on the rare occasion the green sin was not in the immediate vicinity, Greed actually felt himself grow anxious enough to go in search of it.

The feeling stumped Greed for a moment upon recognizing it.

It had only been three months since Envy's creation, why did he feel so worried over something he barely knew? He had known Lust for far longer – since his own creation in fact – and neither worried after her nor missed her when she was on assignment. Greed smirked to himself, his sharp teeth glinting in the half-light of Father's ever-dark lair as he arrived and knocked upon the hard wood of Lust's door. He must be going soft.

"Enter" beckoned the sin within, her voice colored with slight confusion… none of her family were known for their habit of knocking on doors.

Greed let himself in, tweaking the sunglasses at the bridge of his nose as he raised a hand half-mast in a gesture of greeting.

Lust looked up from the newspaper she had been reading –searching for a mention of her handy work in the homicide reports or the obituary's Greed was willing to guess – and glanced upon whomever dare enter her boudoir.

"Yes." Lust said curtly – not a question, but a statement - before returning to her reading thoroughly nonplussed. A discarded heart-shaped box lay disregarded at Lust's feet and a single long stem rose sat nodding sadly in the darkness of the underground; clearly Father had sent her on another 'date', no doubt with another malleably idiotic but somehow high-ranking military moron. The experience had obviously left her testy.

"I didn't even say an-"

"It's in here" she added, with such accuracy it made Greed pause for a moment.

"When did I get so predictable?" the avaricious sin settle for asking rhetorically, chuckling good naturedly as he did so before peering over the rims of his shades in search of his little sibling.

Envy did not remain at large for long, the familiar scraping of it's claws against the floor as it scrambled in his direction greeting him long before he actually laid eyes upon the green sin.

"Hey" he greeted, stooping down to tussle the strange coltish mane that had begun to haphazardly sprout up along the length of it's reptilian neck as Envy practically leapt into him, sitting on it's rear rather like a dog would (despite the awkwardness of it's additional limbs) and nudging it'self as close as possible to the hand affectionately fussing over it.

Coming to rest on it's head as Greed's hand frequently did now that Envy was the perfect height to lean against Greed turned back to lust, a dark eyebrow cocking inquisitively at an unidentified brown substance smeared around Envy's mouth.

"Lust?"

"Yes, Greed?" his sister replied stoically, her gaze never leaving her newspaper.

"What's this around Envy's mouth?"

"hum?" the dark beauty hummed questioningly, sparing a glance in Envy's direction before crossing her legs, reclining back onto her bed and continuing to ignore either of them.

"Chocolate."

Oh thank god, Greed internally sighed. Envy was smart, but they still didn't really know how smart, and they did live in part of a sewer system, and who knows what Pride could have tried tricking the younger homunculus into eating. For a moment he'd feared the worse.

Pride's voice, as if summoned by Greed thinking about him (although it was more likely he'd been there all along and chose only now to coincidentally make himself known) scolded them from the shadows:

"You gave it Chocolate? Great. Now it'll be up all night, and fussy tomorrow morning!"

Lust sighed, accepting Pride's reprimand with patience, but abashedly unapologetic in her manner.

"Get off her Pride. Its fine -" Greed announced through a wide razor-sharp grin, cool as ever even under Pride's disembodied piercing gaze. His statement was more in defense of Envy than of Lust, who's lilac eyes stared adoringly up at him even while it's pink tongue continued to lap at the remaining chocolate staining it's jaws. – We'll go fight for a few hours, that'll tire it out."

Envy –much to Greed's chocolaty chagrin- licked his hand excitedly, the word 'fight' bringing a gleeful glint to it's eyes. It did seem to love the thrill of their play fights.

By the time Envy was the size of a monster, it had changed quite considerably.

No longer fearing the pain of death as it had grown larger –and far less terrified- of Pride it had decided of it's own accord about the time it reached being the size of a large horse that though it still wouldn't speak it was now fully allowed to growl, snarl, roar and snap.

This of course had not helped in facilitating the somewhat abrupt turnaround of it's behavior.

While relatively docile and affectionate in it's infancy it seemed to have developed with every inch it grew a surprising lust for destruction, throwing inhuman tantrums and randomly attacking furniture when it broke in the monster's vicinity, even occasionally snapping at Greed. Shortly after doing so a shocked look would always clamber across it's now monstrous-features, an apologetic nuzzle to whatever appendage Envy had just attempted to rip off sure to follow, but the abrupt snapping between murderous leviathan and benevolent behemoth had begun to put Greed on edge.

"Envy's just nearing maturity" Father had explained crassly, dismissively waving off Greed's concerns on the one and only occasion he sought his father's council. What Envy's nearing maturity had to do with it's suddenly erratic behavior stumped both Lust and Greed. Pride on the other-hand seemed quite overjoyed by the developing predicament.

Perhaps another factor to Envy's growing ferocity was it's sudden confinement. Once it had reached the size of a small cow it became rapidly apparent Greed's room simply wasn't big enough for the both of them anymore; the first few nights of being ejected from the room and brother it had slept in since it's birth creating quite a few days on unrest for the youngest homunculus.

Sleepless nights, fresh claw marks upon Greed's door as it scrapped to be allowed back in and having to sit quietly and be told it expressly was not allowed in any of it's siblings rooms anymore (as it was just 'too big' Lust had explained) did not placate Envy's growing mischievousness.

Finally, when Envy had reached the size of a bull elephant and it became clear it was STILL on the grow it was even disallowed from walking around freely anymore. Without knowing exactly how large Envy would become before finally stopping Father ordered Pride to confine it in the only other room from the throne-room large enough to safely house it.

Instructing his remaining children that while he appreciated their efforts to educate Envy, the youngest homunculus was to be sealed away and thusly off-limits to them for the time being, Father neatly packed the monstrous sin away. Nearly a whole years work had been slowed due to the restriction of keeping one of his children at home to watch Envy and it was simply time Father could no longer allow them to waste. Especially as Envy had now grown beyond any size remotely practical for deployment.

Neither Lust nor Greed himself reacted happily to the news. The little sibling who had once been intended as his shackle – despite having grown more unstable as of late – had somehow and without explanation become important. How it could possibly be important was immediately lost upon the emotionally dulled homunculi. It did not come with them on missions, nor did it serve them in any physical or practical way… and yet somehow the lack of it's presence proved… disquieting.

Just like that, Envy was confined.

The chamber in question was a massive, dull affair – hollow and blank like the walls of a poorly lit insane asylum. With no electricity fed into it due to the hazard posed by the many leaking pipes that dripped from the ceiling and spat steam from the walls the chamber was half illuminated by candlelight…. And half not illuminated at all.

It was depressing, and it's inherent disposition to be depressing rubbed off on it's new occupant within hours as soon as it realized it was not allowed to leave with Lust and Greed as they walked out of the room and out of it's sight.

"No Envy, you know you can't come"

Even Pride did not visit the dank hole in the ground. Though tormenting Envy while it was isolated, miserable and completely at his mercy sounded wonderful to the eldest homunculus, Pride understood that what would make Envy suffer the most was to leave it totally alone. Envy had never known solitude before. It's short 8-month life was always filled with either it's brothers, sister or father. Pride would 'hate to disturb the poor thing's loneliness' as he cooed to Greed one day, the Ultimate shield's silver talons extending slightly with the near overwhelming urge to shut Pride's face up for once, no matter what cost it might come to himself.

That was the first time Greed died for Envy.

The day after he made sure to pay the green sin a visit, even under the ridiculous pretense of changing that room's candles. Pride leered at his explanation as he intercepted Greed on his way to the little sibling Father had deliberately placed 'out of sight and out of mind', but allowed it. After all, if all the candlelight went out Pride would no longer be able to spy on Envy from the shadows…

As Greed had suspected, Envy appeared totally forlorn – half it's body concealed in the deep dark of the unlit part of the chamber.

Even Greed's arrival did not seem to lighten it's spirits, the doggish tail wagging the elder homunculus had come to expect from his little sibling disconcertingly absent.

It gazed back at Greed, listless and unmoving. Hardly the reception Greed had been expecting.

Then it's eyes narrowed, pupils constricting into feral pinpricks and it growled, deep and threateningly before screwing it's eyes up tight like it were in pain and whining quietly.

Not deterred from in the least by Envy's clear distress and concerning behavior Greed approached it with his usually sure, steady gait, his long leather-clad legs bringing him swiftly to the larger sin's muzzle. He rested his ouroboros-engraved hand against his little sibling's distended snout, just as he had when Envy was small.

Melting into the tiny contact on the vast expanse of it's flesh a large pink tongue snaked out to lick Greed, just as it always would have done, except-

"What the hell?" Greed shouted, leaping back away from Envy and the unexpected sight.

Envy's tongue… had human arms?

Not just arms –faces – legs – bodies. Sensing Greed's fear the monstrous sin quickly snapped it's mouth shut and flinched backwards as best as it's huge body could handle, reversing into the concealing shadows of the darkened part of the great hall.

Regaining his composure Greed shouted into the blackness of the room in a rare show of concerned temper; the feelings pelting through him ice cold with worry and red hot with uncharacteristic anger.

"PRIDE! What did you do to Envy!"

He saw one of Pride's eerie grins appear at his feet before he heard his reply, the older homunculus's eyes narrowed in mirth.

"Why, I did nothing to him. Why do you ask, Greed?" the echo purred.

"Why the hell is his mouth full of people?!"

Pride sniggered. "Oh, that" loving drawing out his answer – prolonging Greed's concerned agony for as long as possible – Pride waited a moment before continuing "-it's been like that for a while now. Souls keep trying to burst to the surface of it's skin for some reason. it's disgusting really."

"Souls?" Greed repeated, glancing in Envy's direction to confirm it's location in a strange subconscious instinct he had developed over the last few months. It remained firmly out of sight.

"Oh yesss" Pride drawled, hissing in pleasure "It keeps trying to hide them or ripping them off, but I guess it cant do that to the ones in it's mouth" he added softly, mocking sympathy richer than any aristocrat thick in his tone.

"I guess if you'd visited it more often since it's incarceration you'd have known that though" Pride finished in his sickly sweet voice before erupting into manic hysterics – the unnaturally amplified booming laughter of the homicidal child echoing from every wall around him.

"Don't worry about it too much…" Pride added as his presence left the room, the words fading quieter and quieter as he did so "Father intends to melt Envy down and remake a new one in the morning. You wont have to see it like this for long…"

Words failed.

Thoughts failed.

Even anger failed.

Unable to coax Envy back out of the shadows – his attempts only making the obscured sin curl itself up tight and hide it's face just as it had done the day it was born – Greed wandered away.

…

Pride could be lying just to get a rise from him of course. That was how Pride the arrogant operated. Or it could all be true, and the same time tomorrow evening he would be… envy-less.

Apparently his feet thought it was a good idea for him to indulge in a stiff drink, as they only conspired to stop walking only when he reached a small pokey tavern he had tended to frequent a lot before Envy's birth.

Yes, a small drink sounded good.

The desert-like feeling of the avaricious homunculus's throat and skull-deep ache pounding in-between his ears was the first clue Greed received to suggest he might have ended up having more than one drink.

Creeping his eyes open in case of a sudden attack of light, Greed's muddied mind silently rejoiced that wherever he had been, he had managed to end up deep underground in his own bed, where photophobia had no bearing on his condition and he could simply lie very very still until he stopped feeling so totally crap.

What the hell had he been thinking? Intoxicating a homunculus to the state of amnesia was an awardable achievement even he had only managed to accomplish a few times in his avaricious existence.

Maybe Envy bit him again and they got into another fight or some shit. That seemed to be happening a lot lately…

His mind jerked violently lucid.

Envy.

Sitting up as quickly as he could, Greed was surprised to find he was instantly buffeted back down onto his bed – his forehead slamming against something hard somewhere in the middle of the confusion, which only added to his headache.

Leaning up on his elbows to see what low hanging item of ceiling furniture Pride had thought it amusing to attach above his head he was somewhat taken aback. Beyond a shadow of a doubt Greed acknowledged he was still drunk, having entered into that unpleasant state of consciousness where one is indeed both hung-over and intoxicated simultaneously… and yet hallucinations even seemed a bit much for his drinking habit.

Resting squarely across his hips with a knee splayed on either side of him sat a… well… a someone… boy, Greed supposed… and it was…nuzzling him?

It was a homunculus from the looks of it, the defining dark hair, black clothing, violet eyes and red markings fixed firmly to whoever was sitting on him.

It looked a bit odd for one of Father's creations actually. The shinobi-esk headband, the ninja-like gloves and socks, shoeless feet and form fitting shorts appearing more like an ill conceived mishmash of whatever seemed cool to the mind of a young boy and the outfits described in the Xingese 'Ninja' novels Lust used to read Envy to get it to go to sleep on it's own once it had become too large to sleep in Greed's room anymore.

"Who the hell are you?" Greed questioned, his tone charming as ever as he socked the one on top of him hard in the eye. Homunculi were not to be trusted – a fact known all to well to other homunculi – the effect of waking up to see one sitting on you not too dissimilar from waking up with a highly venomous cobra stuffed down ones trousers. It was a situation that was best to remedy as hastily as possible.

Apparently his new brother hadn't been expecting it as he toppled gracelessly from the bed to the floor with a harsh thud. It defiantly did not seem to expect the boot pressing down on it's throat that swiftly followed.

"You the new Sloth?" Greed questioned.

The boy looked up at him with an expression of total confusion and creeping exhaustion; not the face one habitually wears with a boot to the throat but hell if Greed cared. Father had started planning Sloth recently, it wasn't too stupid an assumption to make that he would output one as soon as possible to make up for the time lost tending to Envy.

"Crap" Greed muttered to himself, remembering his initial reason for trying to get up in the first place.

This new brother could wait, but hell if he was gonna' let him out of his sight.

"Get up" he commanded, reaching to yank the little freak up from the floor and surprisingly managing to do very little to shift his apparently deceptive weight as it obligingly clambered to his feet with a look of wide eyed wonder.

Dragging it by the arm through the corridors that led to Father proved a similar experience, as the little homunculus sort of lolloped unsurely after Greed, wobbling occasionally and clinging to the avaricious sin for support as he regained his balance before whatever appendage clutching to the elder homunculus was swatted forcefully away. Damn couldn't this thing walk on it's own? Even Envy had managed crawling shortly after birth and it had been born with only eight little stumps. This new brother on the other hand had the body of a child-athlete and the grace of a three-legged horse.

"Father" Greed greeted with his usual grin as he entered the throne room remarkably casually for a homunculus on a mission to save one sibling and towing along another.

"hum…Greed" Father took some time in replying, acknowledging his troublesome son with a sort of polite reluctance "What is it Greed, I'm terribly busy". Doing absolutely nothing Greed noted.

Was that a good sign that Envy had yet to be melted, or a bad sign that Envy had already been destroyed?

"Where's Envy?" He questioned, making sure to keep the casual lilt to his tone that seemed to placate Father into actually bothering to take the time to discuss something with him rather than dismiss him straight off.

"hum? Envy you say?" Father's slow voice inquired, staring down at Greed with mild amusement.

"Behind you…from the looks of it…".

A small tugging sensation at the back of his sleeve nagged Greed from behind.

Turning as slowly as he dared without giving his concern away, Greed eventually managed to bring himself to face the boy he had just spent the last five minutes pulling around Father's underground labyrinth.

"So-" Greed swallowed hard. His parched throat protested, but nonchalance somehow remained plausible as he forced the words out "- You've already remade him then?".

The boy stared utterly confused into Greed's eyes; his barefaced innocence of the fact that in being granted life he had murdered Greed's 'little' green sibling a naked insult to his Envy.

"Remade him?" Father repeated slowly, the words apparently lagging between being heard and being processed by the elder's 'busy' mind.

"No… he's right there." Staring down at him the father of the homunculi frowned a little "are you feeling quite right Greed?"

"Father, I mean what happened to the first En-" The sentence was never finished.

Gathering up Greed's unsuspecting hand in it's own smaller one, the boy-homunculus coaxed the appendage upwards, only letting go when it has securely placed in it's rightful position atop the smaller sin's head.

The body was different, but both the feeling under Greed's hand and the feeling somewhere in his chest were familiar enough to stop the taller male mid-sentence.

In a rare show of utter disbelief, the normally laid back homunculus lifted upwards his sunglasses toward his forehead to see clearly the thing under his hand.

His Envy stared up at him with uncertainty.

Having just been punched, floor-stomped, grabbed and tugged along by it's older brother it was unsure if Greed was angry at it, or just having a bad day.

A long-missed ruffling of it's hair effectively laid such concerns to rest.

Pride would later reveal to all the story of how Envy –apparently understanding the threat of impending death – had gone to some lengths to shrink itself, practicing all night and outputting some of the most hideous lizard-man chimeras and malformed 'humans' the arrogant homunculus had ever seen.

Though nodding respectfully at Pride' sneering account of the evening, both Lust and Greed's attention stayed fixatedly focused on the humanoid monster dozing with obvious satisfaction on Greed's bed once more.

000

It's attachment to Greed proved an annoyance to Father now that he came to spend any extended amount of time in his youngest offspring's presence.

There was still much to understand about it's newly demonstrated ability. How long had it been aware of it's potential? How many times could it alter itself? It certainly seemed exhausted by it's first few attempts, the odd little sin even going as far as to pass-out when it was pushed into shifting one time too many.

Not only that, but the youngest homunculus also seemed to exhibit no desire to explore it's newfound power.

It made no attempts to alter itself beyond it's new appearance of it's own accord, no drive to develop it's stamina, no ambition to better itself whatsoever. It even still refused to speak. It was too docile to muster the will to explore it's new strength, too affectionate and admiring to desire anything other than the company of it's siblings.

It became rapidly apparent that the shape shifting ability of his forth child was a skill Envy had developed not as a weapon for Father, but exclusively for reaffirming it's closeness to Greed. Only at Greed's request or Lust's prolonged 'encouragement' was it willing to undertake the energy-intensive procedure again, always glancing back to Greed for final confirmation before doing as Father bid it.

Never before this had Father noticed how it sought Greed, and even Lust's validation before his own.

It was unacceptable.

He was of course certainly not jealous of to whom Envy ran to first. Such an idea was ridiculous the oldest homunculus assured himself.

No, his concern was purely logical.

Greed was his problem child; his inevitable betrayer. The last thing he needed was Greed turning the sibling Father had planned to use as his shackle into an accomplice.

How could he not have noticed this problem until it was this extensive?

Too busy with his plans for Sloth and the world beyond he mused to himself.

Or perhaps he had simply assumed that a frivolous young man like Greed would never bond with a burdensome infant sibling… it was so hard to remember exactly what ones motivation was a whole year later.

We'll, Father settled for thinking to himself – perhaps bonding with Envy was exactly the punishment Greed deserved for his growing defiance.

It would be such a pain…

Of all the sins that had come from him thus far, Envy would be the most work to recalibrate.

Too little jealousy, and envy as an emotion was dulled to mere admiration… yet too much and it stood the risk of becoming uncontrollably destructive in it's self-loathing and resentment. This current one had ended up almost serendipitously well balanced… possibly due to nurture rather than nature. In fact, it didn't seem envious of anything at all. How aggravating.

Perhaps that was part of the problem.

With the conclusion settled in his mind, the fickle and all-powerful God the father of the homunculi fancied himself as visited his wrath down upon the heads of both Greed and Envy in a most unexpected manner.

So Greed feared Father remaking Envy did he? Was made angry enough to come storming into his Father's chamber with that ill-disguised benevolence of his to demand the younger's location? How DARE He! Envy was his child to command! His SIN to do with as he saw fit! Greed doubted Father's judgment of how to handle his own progeny?! His lack of faith would –neigh- HAD, to be reprimanded and Greed had obligingly dropped the means of his punishment into Father's patient hands.

Re-configuring innocent little Envy would be perfect in reminding it's avaricious older sibling who sat at the head of THIS family. Who held the life and death of each of them in his divine hands.

000

"Lust" Greed acknowledged as he strode through the corridors of Father's underground prison.

Thinking back on it, he should have been made instantly suspicious by the lack of Envy in it's now boyish form waiting for him at the threshold of Father's domain as it always had done. As it was however, Greed was returning from a long, arduous and gloriously unsuccessful assignment.

Though he did not need sleep, there was a bone-deep tiredness about him that clouded his thoughts with nothing other than the warm embrace of his own bed.

"- I know the old mans probably pissed, but the whole thing turned out to be some wild goose chase" he added as he approached her, noticing her narrowed eyes, thick downturned lips and furrowed brow. Damn, why did she look so angry?

"Greed…" She began, her voice laced with barely repressed anger, and yet a sort of apologetic sadness that confused the 3rd-born homunculus. It seemed she was at least not angry with him.

"Pride on your case again?" Greed chanced, the invasive elder sibling having been known to ruffle up even Lust's well-adjusted feathers from time to time "-I'm telling you, all you need to do is stare lovingly into the darkest corner of your room, start masturbating and whisper 'This is for yoooooou'. Makes him piss right off."

"Father has re-made Envy." Announced the Ultimate Spear, cutting through the self-congratulatory sniggers of Greed's previous suggestion like a sharpened javelin.

000

"Envy?"

Greed could see it in the distance. It didn't LOOK any different. Surely if Father had succeeded in remaking it – it's past memories no longer there to give it's chosen form context – it would have taken a new appearance?

For a moment, Greed's mind buzzed with hope.

It turned, hearing it's name called and watched attentively as Greed grew ever closer.

"Howdy."

It spoke? Envy didn't speak. And even if it did Greed sure as hell wouldn't have thought it would sound like that.

"I'm Greed"

It raised it's brows curiously, glancing Greed once over with disinterested violet eyes. It sneered at him. Since when the hell did Envy sneer?

"… and?" It questioned, it's bored tone as abrasive as sandpaper to the skin.

Even as Greed dared to mutter his next words, he already knew the answer. He could barely bring himself to look at the Envy in front of him.

"You don't remember me?" the avaricious sin questioned somewhat rhetorically, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose to obscure his eyes from view.

"Pfffffft. Should I?"

A silence fell across the room.

"…I guess not"


	3. Sin

Non-brotherhood-verse

Although there very similar in visual design, I see the Envy from FMA and Envy from FMAB as being totally different characters with completely different back-stories that just so happened to have shared the same outfit and name, which is why the two Envy's might seem quite different in these drabbles. I just thought I'd state that here in case anyone got confused as to why I've suddenly altered the character so much between universes. Thanks for reading!

* * *

"Lussst" Gluttony wined, a tiny, soulful whimpering sound – more like the noise of an infant the rounded homunculus acted as than an adult human, as it appeared.

The sultry sin turned from her course to glance back at her rotund older brother, the portly homunculus stood frozen, edging back and forth along a line as if he where a frightened horse confronted with an invisible fence. His eyes remained blank, as inexpressive and odd as always, but his expression was one of pleading as a thick finger was pulled into and sucked on by his enormous mouth.

"Gluttony?" She questioned curiously.

Gluttony was neither brave nor smart – but it was odd for him to become suddenly so afraid while in her company. Perhaps that was why she let him stay with her, let herself be 'his Lust'. Not 'his' as in a wife might belong to her husband, but 'his' as a child might cling to an empowering toy. Not objectifying, but idolizing. She brought him comfort, and the part of her that remained at its core a woman of Ishval found that to be pleasing. A small beacon of humanity shining brightly like a candle in the obsidian abyss that was a homunculus's life.

The younger sin frowned, watching ever closer as Gluttony glanced at the floor sheepishly, then back to her, and then around – like a guilty child fearing being caught.

"Can't go down there…" Gluttony muttered from around his finger, his voice small, high pitched and unsure.

With an attractive flick of her dark hair Lust glanced back at the cobbled street she had started down. It was a greyish, narrow, winding affair much like all the streets in the lost buried city of Xerzes – the whole terrain skewed in manners sometimes subtle enough not to be noticed, and others too obvious not to be discomforting. Yet other than gravity's strange ability to still function in an underground city where up, right, left and down all seemed to blend into each other in a way that would have made most nauseous, there seemed nothing odd about the street itself. Certainly nothing to warrant Gluttony's obvious discomfort.

"You said the hospital was down this street?" Lust questioned, growing a little perturbed when Gluttony's only response was to gaze dumbly at her and suck harder on his finger.

"But…That's Envy's"

Ah.

Lust sighed heavily.

She had heard about this before, remembering all too well the odd conversation she had dismissed as nothing more than the joke of an old woman as she had been inducted into her new life in this necropolis. Somewhere between cooing like a dog owner made overly adoring by the stupidity of her pet and sneering disgusted by the foolishness of it all, Dante had explained this. Explained that while only the grand golden church in which they sat acted as the base of the homunculi in the deserted city, it was still unwise to venture out into the ruins of the ancient civilization. With a mocking jeer in her voice, the elderly recruiter had retold the story of the clash between two of Lust's new 'brother's', in which one had claimed half the city – deserted, barren and useless – simply as an act to spite the other, whom despite being greedy in name and nature apparently hadn't really cared in the first place – knowing that a place with no value was undesirably useless. Not willing to concede the loss, Envy –as the homunculus was apparently named – had stuck viciously to his prize, even going so far as to defend it with a rabid ferocity from any who entered into his so called territory.

Dante had laughed, indulgently, hatefully – amused and sickened in equal parts. What a terrifying woman she was.

At the time, the newest homunculus had not yet met either of her two 'brothers', their names becoming synonymous with ill-will and bad temper enough to make her remember Dante's jesting threat, yet that was now years ago. Meeting both of the infamous males, Lust had since formed her own opinions of them and forgotten the initial impression Dante had sought to impose upon her of them.

Envy… well… there was too much wrong with Envy to bare thinking about, too much strange to bother trying to analyze so briefly. Greed was much easier.

Greed was no real issue, a man, just like many other men she had encounted in what she could recall of her first life. Predatory, yes. But charming in his own way and ever flirtatious. Yet he was certainly no threat. Regardless of the near crippling sexual appetite she had been reborn with, Greed was not her type. He was a jock, thoughtless, desiring only conquest, almost too male to function. Such traits did not attract her, and while plagued by erotic and near orgasmic thoughts and dreams inspired by her staggering homunculus sex-drive, she still had standards. Besides, Greed was barely ever around, returning only briefly to Dante after long periods of absence to obtain red stones from her, before departing again. Lust suspected Dante allowed this for the simple reason that from the echoing moans, screams and groans that filled the church from Dante's bedroom, Greed's method of convincing the woman to nourish him must have been rather… enjoyably persuasive.

Envy was always scarce during these times. Lust had long thought that perhaps at one point both the male sins had been Dante's competing lovers, their relationships to her odd in a way that very few other reasons could justify, and their hatred of each other just as profound. Both gazes trailed after her, yearning, yet hateful. Perhaps they had both been spurned, or Envy left in favor of Greed, who Dante had also later discarded. Certainly it was Envy who acted the most shunned, whose anger was the more explosive. Regardless of his odd appearance, Envy was the one among them to be feared – the shape shifting sin serving as a constant reminded to Lust that appearances could indeed be deceiving.

Greed and Envy seemed to share a precarious relationship, always as rivals, competing to often-disastrous consequence. His presence enraged Envy to such and extent that his fury became so unmanageable the oldest homunculus had taken to removing himself from the premises whenever Greed stopped by for one of his short residences. Perhaps in its own way, it was a good thing the first sin had his own city to thrash about and expel his anger into.

Maybe that was why Gluttony so feared the looming part of the city Lust questioned, noticing that while the street that passed into the first homunculus's carved out territory was intact, a few blocks down told a very different story – rubble lined the streets of buildings torn down by an incredible force, claw marks larger than any animal Lust knew to exist ripping apart the granite-brick walls, cobbled roads flayed and upturned and buildings smashed, broken, some roofless, some barely standing, as if a gigantic creature had chosen to rampage blindly down the street. From Gluttony's reaction, it probably had.

The younger sister turned back to the infantile homunculus, who still stood quivering on the spot trapped between wanting to stay at her side, and the fear of entering into a zone patrolled by his aggressive elder sibling. Knowing that death was never permanent but served as a rather pointed disciplinary tool Envy had long ago taken to killing trespassers. Gluttony had learned this the hard way.

"Stay here then." She decided for him, unwilling to drag him into a situation he believed so dangerous.

"But – Lust" He cried

"I'll be back soon," she added, trying to add a note of warmth into her voice. How odd it was. Since becoming a homunculus, even the affection she truly felt – the comfort she would have naturally injected into her human tone, was difficult to muster.

Gluttony shifted nervously on the spot like a child badly needing to visit the little boys room, but otherwise said and did nothing, simply staring after the retreating black form of his beloved new sister as her heels clicked nosily down the forbidden street that led into the heart of Envy's urban jungle.

Taking care to keep her heels from snagging in-between the grasping cobbles ad inelegantly breaking, Lust stalked slowly forward, watching with an eerie fascination as the splendor and candor of a once proud city – polished in grey stone as a celebration of the fine masonry and ingenuity of Xerzian people descended into the rubble-littered monster-shaken chaos of a city brought to it's knees.

What motivated the fury that had incensed Envy to do this? To indulge in such petty and pointless destruction. It was not a show of power, the idea of it being a deliberate spectacle instantly undermined by how viciously he guarded this place. So was this then done truly for nothing else than self-expression, the release of ones pent up frustration? If so… Envy literally had enough hatred and fury in his small frame to level cities.

As if spurred to finally give way by only the tiny vibrations of her feet along the street a window at her side –already broken beyond repair – fell from its frame and shattered onto the pavement, the sudden motion and noise of the calamity making Lust's dead heart jump.

Her chest heaved as she drew in calming breaths. She was now inhuman enough not to need to breathe, yet somehow still mortal enough at her core to perform the action anyway. Warily the dark-haired woman glanced around.

In truth she very much doubted Envy was even around, yet Gluttony's overpowering fear of the oldest sin had set her on edge – the rounded homunculi's total belief in Envy as some sort of all seeing, all knowing omnipresent demon fraying even her well adjusted nerves. Logically though, Envy was just one person, and one person who could be anywhere in the miles upon miles that made up Xerzes – if he was even here at all.

Lust scowled to herself, berating her own nervousness. It simply was unlikely – there was no way for Envy to anticipate or become aware of her presence in his ruined half of the city. Yet reassurances aside, she still began to step a little quicker down the increasingly devastated streets. She would be in and out of the hospital quicker than anyone could know…but at the rate at which the carnage progressed, Lust was beginning to suspect there might not even be one left to find.

Such fears where rendered moot as she neared the center of the web of destruction and general vandalization, to find the central district's only hospital and the few shops that surround it abruptly and deliberately intact, as if the imposing building alone had been excused from Envy's apparent ire, the bakery, cobblers and other innocuous old shops that clung to the ancient medical facilities base simply fortunate bystanders clinging unmarred to the buoyant hospital amongst the flood of aggression. And it was like a flood. The anger, the intense hatred that had caused this seemed to linger in the air like a malevolent humidity.

Strange. To think that so much evil could come from such a small boy. Of course, he probably wasn't really or originally small at all, the shape shifter could have been or indeed be anything. He might not even really be a 'he'. But Lust chose to think of him as male, if only to back up her suspicion of Envy and Greed being Dante's ex-lovers still fighting a war for her long dead affections. But that was only a suspicion. In truth whereas Gluttony and Greed where forthcoming and straightforward, she knew very little about the first homunculus, and no one seemed inclined to speak of him even when asked. The sin was secretive and volatile, a difficult to understand as they came, as lithe as a boy and yet as hauntingly knowing as a man that had lived for thousands of years.

He could also be disarmingly civil, at times a keen and sophisticated intellect peering cautiously out from behind the heavy curtain of nightmarish cruelty and fluctuating insanity… yet like all surely dangerous mental patients, he could swing from seeming near totally sane to irrevocably mad in seconds. In many ways it was a shame. She had seen far too much of his behavior, the horrifying expressions of blissfully mad glee that painted his face when it came to inflicting pain, to observing suffering… and even in the short years she had been a homunculus she had noticed a definite increase in the severity and intensity of his psychotic episodes. And yet...While wary of Envy, she did not dislike him.

The newest homunculi made a note to treat him respectfully, and it seemed in return she had inadvertently won his approval. Though he rarely let anyone remain in his presence for long before scaring them off or removing himself from the situation- most likely needing a rest from the public to re-secure to tiny threads of sanity that had come loose in his skull and pin them back down to survive another day – he allowed Lust to be around him, allowed her to be just a little bit closer for a little bit longer than all the other homunculi. Occasionally, he even sought her out for something as mundane as conversation. Lust had been suspicious at first, but as it happened a few more times she had adjusted to the idea that even monsters like Envy might occasionally want to talk. He had a mind after all, and no matter hat condition it was in it was natural for an intelligent creature to want to flex it.

But camaraderie aside, Lust was under no false expectation that Envy would ignore her incursion into his carefully demolished territory as a friendly-mishap. He had warned them out of this place… and regardless of what they thought of him; the other homunculi seemed to largely obey Envy's orders.

Yet with the rest of the city in total disarray and the hospital not even a stone out of place, Lust was quickly beginning to suspect her punishment would be very harsh indeed. This place meant something to Envy. Something powerful enough to make the sin preserve it even in the throws of total psychosis. Clearly it was personal… and Envy took personal questions and issues very badly indeed. Perhaps that was another reason why despite working with him, speaking with him, even living with him he managed to remain such an enigma.

The Xerzian hospital was an odd affair indeed to Lust, her fingers sliding questioningly over the glass door that sealed its entrance before gently pushing the doorway open. Despite the poor illumination from lights that had not worked in hundreds of years she had little difficulty seeing, each surface naturally made visible to her homunculus eyes.

Everything within was white. White walls, ceiling, even the fabrics of the furniture. For a moment she feared Gluttony had in fact directed her to a mental hospital rather than a physical one, yet she pressed onwards.

Such long winding corridors this place had, a sign describing what could be found on each floor informing her of merely the buildings 6-floor structure and nothing else. What was 'radiology'? Or any of these other strange words? She recognized 'maternity ward, chapel and recovery room' but little else… clearly these Xerzians had been far beyond what where once her people – a hospital in Ishval being approximately a large hut in which the local shaman lived – and perhaps even beyond Amestrian technology. Regardless though, the machines where so complex that without their intended operators surely this place was of no use to anyone, especially Envy given the face he was dead…. And the dead generally where past requiring the help of doctors. So why was that this place remained untouched despite being obsolete in its desertion?

Navigating to the first set of steps, the sultry sin strode calmly down the hollow hallways, a stagnant yet odd smell lingering on the air that was like nothing she had ever encountered in Ishval to her memory. The smells in this building where odd, the machines of the buildings where odd, even the idols of the building where odd she noted as she passed by the 'Chapels' open-door way, a large icon of a man pinned to a 't' handing decorated across the wall in macabre grandeur, empty wooden pews leering up towards it with an odd abstraction.

It was at that moment Lust realized her folly…

The pews where not as deserted as her eyes had first led her to perceive. She stifled a nervous gulp as in the ever bleak darkness of the room her eyes adjusted enough to spot a thick sliver of white floating eerily in the shadows cast by the looming seats… a white stretch of what she quickly identified was in fact someone's back, the rest of the body attached obscured by both the back of the pew and the strangely prostrate position of its owner.

Like an arachnophobe spotting a spider two thoughts simultaneously warred inside Lust for attention. The first stated quite emphatically that they where in trouble while the second wisely counseled that at least now she knew exactly where Envy was rather than fearing he could show up at any moment. Still, that didn't give her any notion of how to deal with the homunculi… especially as she seemed to have wandered in on something so private. Even before Dante Lust had never seen Envy so respectful, so submissive – reverent almost.

Glancing to the agonized figure bound to his strange 't' – the figures wooden face carved in eternal agony Lust could not stop herself from wondering. Is this the god that Envy worshiped – the avatar of suffering? Its protruding ribs and sparse loin cloth so far form the might of the glamorous ishvalan warrior-god that it seemed inconceivable that both could be united under the same classification of religion. Yet somehow… half starved, a strange combination of muscle, bone, thorns, wounds and eternal torment…this god suited Envy.

Slowly, as if in no hurry at all, the homunculus in question finished whatever his prostration had been intended to achieve and straightened up to stand. His hair fell across his face, occluding his expression as the sin slunk out from between the pews that stared up closest into the face of his carved god as the eldest homunculus slipped calmly down the aisle, not even stopping to glance at her as he tightly gripped her wrist in passing and forcibly yanked her from the room. But what would look like gentility with the soft slowness of his actions was tempered with aggression, the strength that he used to clamp his small hand around her gloved wrist deliberately damaging to the extent of snapping the delicate arm in half. Lust winced, the pressure on the jarred bone excruciating but mirroring Envy's silence as he escorted her from the room. Only after the sound of a second snap did Envy close the door to the chapel and release her. The wrist healed instantly as Lust rapidly took steps back to prepare herself for whatever punishment the oldest homunculus thought to visit down upon her. Apparently it was so bad he had shut the door to prevent his god from seeing.

Taking no notice of her adoption of a fighting stance, the green-haired sin raised his face enough for her to glance his expression, his features pulled into an angry scowl, yet the conditioned muscles of his body remained unexpectedly lax.

"Why are you here!?" He demanded quietly, his rage venomous, viperous, but held back tightly behind clenched teeth. While his body remained unprepared for attack, his fists clenched angrily, the pressure of his grip making his toned arms steel with muscle as his whole body seemed to try and grind itself down – teeth grinding against teeth, nails grinding into his palm, eyebrows grinding into a pressurized scowl.

"I –"

"Have you been following me?" Envy continued, interrupting her before her sentence could even be spoken.

"No" Lust snapped back, unimpressed at being spoken too that way by anyway one, if there was one thing she couldn't stand it was being interrupted.

"This place is a hospital, I came here for something. I had no idea it was your – "

The younger sin glanced back at the singular room that served as a tiny church for Envy's apparent god. It seemed remarkable, that such a small representation of a mere human man, in such a tiny, unobtrusive room could be the cause of Envy's reluctance to attack her even in the depths of anger… that Envy would allow something after so many years of being dead and near deranged to still have such power over him.

"Chapel" Envy finished, the grinding pressure on his jaw easing off a little, but not completely. "All hospitals had one"

Lust frowned. 'Had' them? So like Envy himself, the religion of the homunculi was also dead. Fitting.

"I am sorry." Lust settled on, emphasizing 'am' as she spoke it, attempting to inflect as much sincerity as was left in her homunculus-heart. "It was not my intention to disturb your worship."

Envy scoffed, but otherwise looked away, glaring hatefully at the white wall next to him as if unable to meet her eyes. She had never seen him do such a thing before. Like a dog with a superiority complex, Envy had a habit of staring people down to establish his superiority, Lust had noticed that only Greed seemed able to hold his gaze – even Dante looked away, through more in disgust than anything else from what she had observed. This sudden inability to face her… almost seemed like… embarrassment.

"You don't have to act so ashamed."

"I'm not ashamed!" Envy spat back "Why the hell are you even here! This is my place! FUC-" Envy stifled his scream hid shout, abruptly closing his jaw with such force it produced a hollow sounding 'clonk'. The silence lasted for mere seconds before the sin chose to finish with a low dangerous growl.

He would not even swear in the dwelling of his god? How strange. Envy had never struck her as the superstitious type. Growls descended into snarls and finally silence once more, the sin despite being very intelligent sometimes seeming more beast than man. Perhaps that was what the life of a homunculus did to it's victims over the amount of time Envy had been existing as one.

"Did Dante send for me?" He questioned finally, a strange high note Lust could not identify the meaning of littering the end of his question.

Lust sighed once more. She had already answered his question, but it seemed he was as mistrustful of her as he was everyone else, or mad deaf to her in his own anger.

"No, No one even knows you're here. I'm only here because I wanted something from the hospital"

His steely expression inexplicably darkened as he glared straight through her, his eyes apparently pretending to use her as their target but being slightly too out of focus to really be pinning her down.

"Tell anyone about this and I'll make sure Dante knows about that little human bastard of yours. What was his name? Luzon?" The older sin sneered, hostile and mocking as if replying to a verbal attack that simply hadn't been launched.

"Lujon is dead." Lust replied crisply, perturbed by Envy's fained ignorance. This after all the verbal abuse he'd given her for indulging her sin with the man one last time… he was so much like… like that other man she could barely remember.

"He's been dead for months."

She gazed speculatively at him, an eyebrow rising in question even as she remained irritated by the low jibe. "Do you truly not remember?" The information shouldn't have been news to the elder homunculi… It was a little worrying.

Envy also frowned back, not angered so to speak, but the frown of someone confused, unsure what to think but unwilling to show weakness.

"Whatever." The sin dismissed the issue with a wave of his hand. Envy was usually so thorough… so meticulous, Lujon's death should not have been forgotten… and it wasn't the first time this had happened either, the mole on that Ross woman another strange slip of the sin's usually immaculate memory. Lust chose not to mention it though. "What do you want from here anyway?" He pressed, quickly changing the subject away from himself as he always did.

Lust opened her mouth to reply, but shut it just as abruptly. Could she truly even tell Envy? If Envy was familiar with the building, or even Xerzian culture then he could be a great help in locating what she desired… but the issues surrounding it shamed her somewhat. Now it was her turn to be embarrassed.

Envy gazed at her expectantly for mere moments before apparently becoming bored of the whole ordeal and shifting as if to walk away.

"I'm looking for something to induce vomiting" Lust finally sighed, committing herself to Envy's help… for better or worse. It would likely take her a very long time to find and understand such a thing if it existed on her own in this massive facility.

"Vomiting?" Envy questioned, curious and suspicious. "Why?"

"Gluttony - " Briefly she considered her next statement. What age was Envy, what gender was he? How much humanity was left within him? Would he understand her request… her sentimentality? "-ate a possession, a gift Lujon gave me"

"You realize your dead right?"

"I had noticed, yes."

"Dead women don't get to have possessions"

Lusts eyebrow twitched at the elder 'brother's' lack of tact.

"Dead – " She played around with pronouns for a moment –'boys?' 'Men?' 'Women?' what was Envy supposed to be – "_People_ also don't pray. Yet here we are." Lust smirked empowered at Envy's feral glare, the passing of the insult assuring both of them that Envy was not about to do anything violent or overly rude in the hospital that served as the extended housing of his god.

Hissing out as much ill-will as possible without upsetting his ideals Lust thought she heard him muttering that he hoped she 'overdosed' before linking to the right around the corridor which led to the stair way that had once before served as her target destination. Without hesitance Lust followed, her own booted feed sounding jarringly heavy in comparison to the pattering of Envy's own bare footfalls.

"You know this complex well" Lust noted as Envy seamlessly navigated the many corridors and stairwells that led them onwards. Clearly the elder sin's knowledge of this place went far beyond the simple and occasional visitation of the hospital's meager religious site. Envy said nothing, continuing to press forward in front of her like a horse pulling a carriage, resolute but reluctant.

"Your Xerzian." She stated. It did no longer needed to be posed as a question. It had become so rapidly obvious even Lust herself was bemused she had never put all the pieces together before to realize the fact.

Envy glanced back at her and scowled, the fleeting act as incriminating and confirming as any number or arrangement of words could ever be. Swift as ever, Envy managed to promptly drive them into a room to her right before any more apparently uncomfortable revelations could be made.

Lust glanced around as Envy disappeared to the back to stare at the many bottles on the shelf in the room's far corner. Why the homunculus had chosen this one ad not any other was beyond her, it appeared no different from any other of the multitude of rooms they had passed by on their way through the building – white walls, white ceiling and the same minimalistic human-length table in the middle.

"Sit." Envy commanded without looking back at her as he continued to analyze the content of the shelves. Apparently this would take some time. With no chair in the room, Lust sat herself squarely and elegantly upon the table provided, the woman's abundant figure and wash of silken black hair making her appear more like a statue atop a pedestal than the living-dead doll that she truly was.

After much consideration, the older sin extracted three bottles of small capsules from the shelf, depositing them each onto the far end of the table Lust sat upon to better assess which one was going to truly be his recommendation.

"I'm sure any of them will be fine, Envy" Lust reassured the green-haired homunculi as his purple gaze flew from the fine print on the label of one bottle to the next. Envy scowled at her.

"I don't even know if any of them will work. Homunculi don't get sick or puke up easy"

Lust frowned a little at the statement but let it slide. If Envy wanted to play doctor she would indulge him for now…

"And you're sure you want it back even after its been in Gluttony?" He asked, glancing back to her again from the back of a bottle.

"I am sure."

"How long?" he questioned

"How long what?" She replied confused.

"How long ago did he swallow it?" The sin snapped, his bedside manner truly nothing to be envied. Clearly he was becoming frustrated with her own lack of contribution when he was doing his best to be so… professional. Something about the way he took to the facility – like a bird to the sky – gave her the impression he might have had past experience here… perhaps as a doctor? What a terrifying thought. Or maybe a patient…

Her thoughts stilled. Envy's seriousness as well as the odd occurrence of him choose this non-descript room over a multitude of identical others creating a brick of cold emotion in the bottom of her dead stomach. Could he have? Here…?

"Hey!" The sin in question demanded, snapping his fingers in front of her face.

"A few weeks or so." Lust quietly replied, still at sea in the wash of unanswered questions.

"Weeks?" Envy repeated, puzzlement creeping into both his question and expression as he watched Lust's dazed countenance switch back to focus on him once more, perhaps a little bit more intensely than the shape shifter was comfortable with.

"…Has he eaten anything recently?"

Lust scowled and crossed her arms; the three of them frequented cafes often, if only for a break from the oppressive underworld they lived in, surely Envy had not forgot that too. "Last week we – "

"Ah yeah I remember" Envy declared, waving his hand in mock placation as Lust scowled at the interruption once more. "What else?" Envy pressed.

"Nothing." Lust gazed at him long an hard. Was that just another slip of his mind? As unstable as the sin's body had to be to change so drastically on such a regular basis, has his mind finally been compromised too, even his memories falling away slowly but surely?

"What?" The older homunculus muttered under his breath.

"What, what?" Lust sighed as she had been doing so much recently, becoming increasingly exhausted with the whole thing. Clearly Envy was finding it all dismissible but she was not.

Her stare grew increasing suspicious, regarding the older sin attentively as if she could see into his head and watch pieces of his brain crumble away. He shrugged nonchalantly.

"If its not dissolved already then I'd say cut it out, no amount of these is gonna make any real difference to a homunculus" The green-haired boy finished, jerking his head towards the pills.

"That's a lie and I know it" Lust demurely accused "I've seen you eating things like that before" she continued, guesting with a claw towards the outstanding jars. It was the hidden knowledge that she had observed Envy consuming pills in vast quantity's before that had given her this idea in the first place.

"I take Ketamine you hag, not human tranquilizers!" Envy snapped, the habits of the homunculi's most secretive sin apparently not being welcomed into the public forum that was the deserted hospital. Lust frowned. Envy sneered.

"Sleeping pills, made for horses" He elaborated.

"Why?"

"For when your horse has had too much coffee."

"No" Lust snapped back "Why do you take them?"

"Mind your own damn business!" Apparently that had been enough to rile Envy to the point of leaving, the sin storming from the room and slamming the door with much unneeded theatrics.

A more apt question would be why such a thing was kept in a human hospital at all, but Lust dismissed this along with the other pills Envy had been looking at. If the older sin was telling the truth and anything short of horse-medicines where truly ineffective on homunculi then even carrying the useless orange bottles back home would be a waste of her energy, just as this whole trip had been.

With the whole thing written off as a thought provoking but otherwise useless excursion into pointlessness, Lust gathered herself to her feet and left, it would take some time to find her way out without Envy's guidance, but after attempting to ask the sin anything of himself if was unlikely she would see much of him for a few days at the least.

After all, when it came to sulking, Envy was far more childish than even Gluttony.


	4. Tomato

Brotherhood-verse

"Soooo." Greed drawled, the lack of any form of activity inside the underground lair of the homunculi and the appalling rain flooding Amestris outside causing a rare congregation of Greed and Envy. Both equally bored and extremely disinterested with the lacking methods of entertainment that their home offered had forced the two sins into … conversation.

"Did you know that if you're hands bigger than your face then you masturbate too much." Greed joked. If he was going to be stuck down-stairs in this hellhole the least he could do was torment Envy.

Without hesitation the shape shifter reacted exactly as Greed had predicted, scowling suspiciously at the older sin, but nevertheless lifting his hand to his face, only to have him face palm himself by Greed's quick mocking strike

"HAHAHAH. How can you really be that stupid?!" The avaricious sin roared, holding his belly as his body shook with laughter

"grrrrr" Envy growled out, apparently feeling oddly docile and simply returning to rest his head on his hand and staring down half-heartedly at the floor.

Greed's laughter continued un perturbed, taking no notice of his siblings failure to over-react to quite the extent that was normal. "Why would you – d'you even – "The older sin chortled before stopping himself short. "No wait, I don't want to know". Greed slapped his thigh, convulsing on the sofa he currently occupied as Envy stared jealously up at him from the floor. Envy wasn't allowed on the furniture.

"Pft! That's stupid anyway!" The younger sin finally settled for declaring, not really wanting to continue to rise to Greed's joke… time had taught him no matter what he said he could never verbally one up his elder brother. Settling on a fact over a silence that might incriminate his stupidity further for Greed to pick at, the shape shifter added, "Lust never does, and her hands where huge."

"What?!" Greed gasped out in amused disbelief "Lust did! All the time!"

"No she didn't"

"Yes she did"

"No she didn't! I think I would have noticed!" Envy snapped. Greed's chuckles had returned at his statement, the older sin clearly laughing at him rather than with him. Bastard.

"You think she'd have invited you in to watch?" Greed chanced, a wide smirk creeping across his face at Envy's expense.

"Yeah, why not? She used to watch me." The shape-shifter replied with a shrug. He wasn't going to let Greed rile him up! … again…

"…What?" The older questioned, peering over his glasses for an un-adultered look at Envy, disbelief plastered across his face as if he where seeing the sin for the first time. "Man your sick! Do it in private or not at all!"

The superior sneer that had curled into something resembling a smile on Envy's face at his brother's apparent loss of words fell immediately, his momentary victory over Greed vanishing before it had even begun. He sat and steamed. And then he exploded

"WHATS SO DAMN PRIVATE ABOUT CHEWING ANYWAY!"

"what do you mean whats so - !" Greed began, voice heightened and expression dumbfounded, before trailing off – his lips curling upwards at their corners to smirk at his little sibling. "…. Chewing?"

"What you going deaf now too!?" Envy grumbled, years spent with Greed telling him from the look on the older sins face that he was about to be humiliated

"Envy…. Chewing is masti 'Cate' ing"

"Yeah, and?" Envy prompted, waving his had casually in the air to show how little he cared.

"Wer talking about masturbating"

"tomato, tomatoe"

Greed sniggered.

"No Envy, their totally different things, not just different pronunciation" Glancing back at Greed curiously at such a development, Envy scowled as Greed's sniggering descended into snorts and giggles.

"Y-you don't know what it means do you

"I AINT A GOD DAMN DICTIONARY!" The smaller sin snapped back.

Sensing his younger sibling had taken as much of the situation as he was going to in what passed for Envy as good humor, the avaricious sin beckoned the other homunculi over to him with a few slow inward curls of his finger. Envy looked hesitant… but like a dog so starved it was willing to eat even a rancid scrap of meat, he slowly rose and crept to Greed's side. Surely any possible affection from anyone was better than nothing from no one.

He stood at Greed's side, the older sin wasting no time in reaching up to grab Envy's hair from his seat on the sofa and pull own the younger sins head to whisper in his ear.

…

"THEY DO WHAT!? WHY!?" Envy shouted, recoiling from the information and it's giver as if Greed had doused him with freezing water.

"How many years have you spent impersonating humans, and not once undercover have you had to – " Greed trailed off, his voice softening to become genuinely interested.

Envy scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck

" – I feigned headaches a lot, sometimes sudden onsets of gay, menopause, randomly occurring herpes outbreaks. That kinda thing"

"You know about all of that, but you've never…"

"Shad'up!" Envy shouted, clinging to his head comically wide-eyed, as if just imagining it was going to split his skull in half.

A hundred years and still such an immature little kid, Greed mused.

"SO even you find your form too weird to touch? I mean, com'on, Your hairs the color of snot."

"SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" Envy raged, rounding on Greed to point at him aggressively. "Your sick!"

And with that, to the backdrop of Greed's self-congratulatory laughter, Envy stormed off.


	5. Vanilla

Mature: not for under-aged readers.

Greed x Envy lemon, Yaoi, Brotherhood-verse

* * *

He'd updated his form again.

Perhaps Greed should have been more surprised, Envy had taken to adding or changing bits to 'his' preferred form every half a century or so. It had proved somewhat jarring the first time he had done so a few decades ago, but the mind beneath invariably stayed the same. Perhaps that was the thought that usually stopped the avaricious sin from being so amazed.

He'd really gone all out this time though. Like an adult painter redoing a picture they had drawn in their childhood – the subject matter was the same, the arrangement was the same, but the style, the colors, the detailing of the anatomy and perfection of the proportions that come with years of built up artistic experience separated it completely from it's juvenile predecessor. Why Envy had taken to making all these changes at once rather than simply adding them in as he went along was lost on Greed, but it did make for some interesting bodily comparisons.

Envy's first form had been boyish in every sense. Perfectly suited to the mind-set of the young jovial homunculi. Like a child, knowing the shape of something but with no patience for details his form had been simple – soft shapely limbs, rounded cheeks, a simple pointy nose and chin and the barest dusting of additional details like a navel, nostrils, fingernails. Not really sculpted or refined, a wholly smooth an toneless affair with eyes a clear copy of Lust's own and a sort of shaggy mop of dark plum colored hair spilling over his self-made headband in a waterfall of long spikey locks. A strange combination of soft shapes and harsh lines and angles, the sparse clothing clearing designed simply to cover up the areas of the body little Envy either had no knowledge of or no interest in researching in order to allow him to breeze further into the bits of the design he thought were … cool. It was simple. Almost cute in it's reflection of it's creators naivety. Greed often wondered why Envy had kept it this way so long after Father had 'remade' him. Perhaps the newer Envy had simply accepted it, like a human accepts the body they have been born into… without knowing of course that the form he had been reborn into was the result of his predecessor's hard work and months of observation.

His second rendition wasn't until a few decades later, and while it wasn't as simplistic as his first form, this one showed off if anything the art of a painter who had tried to put too many new techniques down on a single canvas, the end result becoming a rather complicated ordeal to look at.

The most immediate change perhaps was the hair… the weedy purple boyish style replaced with thick leafy-green locks that extended much further down his back towards his ass. It wasn't… a particularly pleasant color that was for sure, curiously it did rather make him resemble some sort of wilted shrubbery though. Hardly the effect it turned out Envy was going for, but good material to tease him with nevertheless.

As age had no bearing on Envy's body Greed supposed he thought of that new form as the herald of his 'teen' years, the younger homunculi taking on a particularly bitchy streak after breaking away from the company of Lust and sometimes himself to go and be brainwashed by Pride, who at this point in his life Envy seemed to have taken to idol worshiping. It was also in this version of himself that gender really became a question of debate for the homunculi, the previous all over slenderness of a boyish youth replaced with additional height and discordantly toned legs that gave his thighs a curvy thick look in comparison to his still slender and flat stomach that without bothering to compensate for by expanding his chest or shoulders eluded to previous nonexistent femininity... yet he'd made the bottom of his face wider and given it a somewhat masculine jaw… it didn't help the already staggering degree of androgyny..

Well it was a step in the right direction Greed supposed. Envy's concept of human anatomy had evolved from 'barely existent' to 'just confused'. He seemed to have made his flat belly longer, or his chest shorter… it was hard to tell, but it resulted in his now slightly-articulated pectoral muscles being just a little too pronounced and high-up, like a teenage girl with a training bra. Greed got a hell of a lot of mileage out of that.

Now this new form though… this was something else.

It was poised, calculated, well put together and appeared surprisingly well researched for something of Envy's creation. The hair had gone full circle, neither as thick as its previous version nor a spindly as it's original but a tendril-like mix of both. He'd kept the length, but darkened it again, and though it still shone in the light with a green gleam it was a different shade, a royal green over the color of well… snot perhaps.

The traces of the androgyny of the past form had also been dialed back by the general addition of muscle mass and masculine proportions across the whole of his body; his previously flat stomach now awash with visible abdominal muscles. His previously slender arms swollen with biceps to match and counter act the previous version's toned thighs. Even his chest was made masculine… despite being clothed still in a skintight half-top. His shoulders were now a great deal wider, ribcage larger and hips made narrower to accentuate a classically masculine silhouette. He'd even gone to the trouble to change up his face a little, the wide feminine eyes of his previous two forms narrowed a little into shrewd slits, his face less rounded and thinner, even his nose had been improved – the pointed peak of his last form rounded off into a more realistic –albeit somewhat out of place- button nose that was somehow both alien and fitting at the same time. He looked a good deal older, maybe 16 now, a definite upgrade from the 13ish year old body he had first wrestled his monstrous green self into so many years ago… Greed had to admit, on closer examination this new Envy looked –

"Not bad." He wolf whistled, knowing how much Envy had come to despise the sound during his more feminine version.

Envy glanced around, scowling as his eyes searched for Greed in the shadows of their subterranean homunculi stronghold. Catching sight of him he vaulted from the sturdy pipe he'd been perched on, striding towards the elder sin who's teasing yesterday had finally prompted him to refresh his form once more. And man, had he gone all out.

Greed cocked an eyebrow immediately as Envy began to approach him. Now this was interesting. Envy had had the same walk for over a century, naturally he noticed instantly when it now appeared to be a little... off. A distinct swagger had entered his step, a little awkward even compared to the usual tight-thighed slinkiness he strolled around with. A massive sharkish smile pulled across Greed's face. Oh how he recognized that walk all to well. That was the somewhat wide-set march of someone with a few extra nuts and bolts handing between their legs.

"Finally got around to giving yourself junk then?" He teased, peering over his sunglasses with a degree of ferocious curiosity. Never before had Envy ever been gendered; the loose concealing loincloth and feminine gait an easy give away of the fact. What had he made it like? Giant to overcompensate for his tiny ego? Or maybe itty bitty so it would still be hidden in his shorts? Did Envy even know what a dick looked like? God… this had the potential to be hilarious.

"Pft" Envy hissed through his teeth, a defensive note coming into his wide-set stance "Like hell I'd tell you about it even if I had."

Oh how he loved to watch Envy get his shorts into a bunch "Its kinda obvious" Greed grinned, his eyes flashing once over Envy before coming back to rest on him. He'd done a good job on this one, like the previous two where just practice runs. The level of detailing was almost human. The thin lines detailing his soft new lips, his skin no longer sickly pale, but with a distinct peachy tint; he'd even gone so far as to give himself nipples this time, the hard masculine pectoral muscles and smaller circular additions adorning obvious at all times now that he was close enough through the skin-tight rubbery fabric of his top. He wasn't using clothing to skimp over details anymore – that was obvious.

"So, do they work?" He questioned, a malicious grin spreading across the avaricious sin's face. Clearly Envy was going to a lot of trouble to impress someone, the new hints of masculinity and sexuality as obvious as if he'd painted his lips red and shoveled on turquoise hooker eye shadow with a garden trowel.

"Do what work?" Envy questioned testily, grimacing at Greed with the usual jeering expression he adopted when being made fun of.

"These" Greed laughed, amused at how easily Envy had fallen into his conversational trap as he grazed a knuckle over the fabric above Envy's nipple, the owner of said nipple flinching and jumping backwards before shouting at the top of his lungs

"WHAT THE HELL!"

Greed guffawed boisterously; his asexual sibling's new genitalia not making up for over a lifetime of sexual inexperience. He'd leapt back and shrieked like a teenage virgin, just as he'd expected Envy to.

His little brother took another step back at the chortling laughter, sneering to himself as Greed cried himself to tears. Greed always looked so fucking good when he laughed. Hell, that was probably why everyone tried to get him to laugh in the first place, those nasty little humans up above crawling and simpering around him like love-struck morons. Envy glanced down forlorn at the floor as the jealousy at his core swam up his veins to drown him once more, a familiar and totally unwelcome feeling.

"HAHAHAHAH!" Greed laughed himself silent, noticing Envy staring obliviously into the floor the same way he did every time his sin got the better of him, a disturbing blankness falling over his usually bright eyes. "Hey! Ya'alright?"

"hum?" Envy hummed vacantly, glancing back up at Greed with a hollow gaze. These weird turns had been happening a lot more recently when the usually thoughtless younger sin seemed totally trapped within his own head. Perhaps like Gluttony's claims of hunger and Sloth's perpetual exhaustion, this too was Envy's imbalance. When humans where about it turned into a murderous rage that recently only Lust had been able to calm him out of – fortunate in it's own way as it had led to Envy being reassigned to Lust's side and out of the way of Pride's manipulative bullying for the most part – but when it was only him and other homunculi; where senseless fighting would go punished by father, his rage seemed to turn inwards, drowning out the younger sin's attitude until all that seemed to remain was a bleak shell.

Thankfully, Greed had developed a cure: distraction.

"You know their not supposed to do that right" The elder sin settled on, pointing towards Envy's chest "Was a good try, but the details are still a bit off"

"Huh?" Envy muttered, like a hypnotist's-victim rousing slowly from a trance "What?" He glanced down at his chest as indicated.

"Its hot in here-" Greed explained, the underground labyrinth waiting to swallow up Central always warming to levels far beyond the outside temperature as the metal pipes heated in the hot air and water on hot summer days such at this "- There only supposed to go like that if you freezing cold or-" Greed trailed off, the hard pinpricks of Envy's new nipples distracting him momentarily.

"Or?" Envy placidly prompted, more awake now - still cantankerous- but also still lacking bite and his usual conviction between his words as he raised a hand thoughtlessly to rub against the new nipple Greed was pointing at as if to calm it back into softness.

"-Or when you're turned on" Greed smirked, Envy's clouded gaze finally brightening with indignation and leered sharply at him.

"I ain't turned on! It just feels weird since you had to go and fucking poke it! They're new ya' know!" Envy snapped

"…This is by far the strangest conversation I've ever had with you" Greed muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his head with amused awkwardness "I really didn't need to know how your new nipples feel…"

"Tingly" Envy added with a snide grin, liveliness sneaking back into his demeanor as the challenge of filling Greed's head with unnecessary and undesired information coaxed him into the first stirrings of sadistic joy

"Ha! Then you are turned on!" Greed returned with vitality. Now that Envy's mood had taken an upturn it was officially open season on teasing once more.

"Wha?" A hilariously dumbstruck expression splattering across the younger homunculi's face "AM NOT!"

Grinning like a cobra Greed slipped like a snake back into Envy's personal space, an experienced finger flicking at the bud Envy had been rubbing - rather alluringly now that he came to think about it - for the last minute or so, the still hard nub apparently having not receded in the least.

"Hey!" Envy shouted as he flinched again, his words chastising and his arms grabbing at Greed's own but not actually going so far as to exert the force that might suggest he wanted Greed to stop, his expression one of surprise more than anything else.

"Yeah?" Greed questioned casually, his nonchalance taunting Envy's jumpiness as a second hand raised its thumb-pad to brush against the Envy's other unattended nipple, the two thumbs moving in unison to stroke at the tight black-clothed peaks in small slow circles.

"Ah! Greed!" the smaller sin hissed through clenched teeth, beginning to breath deeply through his nose which in turn made his chest heave, adding a second wave of motion as his traitorous new human milk-nozzles tried to push themselves further into Greed's obliging hands.

"Why do human men even have these anyway! So useless!" The younger growled, unwilling to show either enjoyment or agony, as both would serve to make him appear weaker… and he wasn't quite sure what he really thought of all this. The sensation was… different, certainly. He'd never felt anything quite like it. That didn't necessarily make it a good thing though.

"Cos-" Greed chuckled into Envy's ear, the effect stirring a completely different and also totally unknown feeling in the smaller homunculus "-Some guys are really sensitive there, just like you seem to have made yourself"

"I didn't make myself sensitive to anything!" Envy hissed though his teeth once more, the experience starting to become a bit too much.

"hahaha" Greed laughed good-naturedly, amused by Envy's clear indecision of whether to fight off the strange new experience or be drawn into it by curiosity. Not to mention if he could get a good look at Envy's new form first and point out all the bits he got wrong before Envy could compare and change them. It would be something he'd never let the younger sin live down, and without amusements like that, the life of a homunculi would indeed be a very boring immortality.

"So here's the thing" He chanced, grinning at the slight haphazard flush perking across Envy's cheeks, "I'm curious, you're curious and you've got a whole new body to play about with. Lots of new bells and whistles and all that. You want to experiment?"

"Experiment?" Envy questioned, managing to still sound dubious even with the thick overtone of budding arousal clear in his voice. Holy hell, he'd made himself sensitive.

"Yeah" Greed breathed into Envy's ear, his hands snaking one around Envy's back to hold him in place and the other down to cup whatever mysterious malformed object was now hidden beneath his loincloth.

The effect was instantaneous, Envy both nearly leaping out of his skin at the totally unknown contact and growling out a stifled moan. "So?" Greed prompted, loving the slight resistance of the organ pressed against his hand that told him Envy had already begun to grow a little hard on him. He'd have to use that nipple massage thing on some of the ladies topside if this was the reaction he'd get.

Envy bit his lip, struggling against a good many things he'd never have dreamed of feeling before. He had no idea what Greed was thinking with his hand down 'there', but it was making him feel weird all over – this new traitorous body tense and tingly and almost feeling a little uncomfortable all at the same time. Greed probably just wanted to strip him so that he could laugh at him anyway. He was always the first one to jump on anything he got wrong when he made a body-update.

"Only if" Envy replied through gritted teeth, grinning a little as he considered a way to get what he wanted (whatever that currently was) without being made a fool "This says on the whole time" he finished, tugging at the bottom left corner of the part of his loincloth Greed had not captured in his wayward hand in explanation.

"Heh, so you know nudities involved? Well that's a start I guess." Greed was temporarily taken aback, staring at the body he now held closer to his own than he had done in years as Envy's vivid purple eyes gazed up at him, cat-like, searching for signed of deceit or betrayal. "Sure". He finished, unused to being so well examined by the small sin. He really was a bit creepy sometimes.

"Ya gotta promise" Envy barked, pulling himself a bit firmer towards Greed, the extra pressure coming from the heel of Greed's cupped hand making him hiss once more as he did so.

"Yeah, Yeah, I promise" Scowled Greed, unhappy his plan had been thwarted… Unless he got Envy so tightly wrapped around his thumb that he could persuade the smaller sin to unveil himself in the heat of the moment, or the mindless cool down of an orgasm.

"Com'on then"

Shoed feet strolled slowly down the corridors of Father's underground realm with feigned casualness as bear-footed ones trotted easily behind, the door to Greed's bedroom thrown open and locked closed as Envy circled around the cluttered space. All manner of items were thrown on the floor, the room even smelt like Greed, like cigarettes, leather and old bottles of liquor. He'd never been in here before by Greed's choice, he'd snooped about in all his siblings rooms before but never invited – it struck Envy as being sort of homey, peaceful in its messy chaos.

It felt familiar...

"So" Greed prompted, gesturing with his thumb towards the bed. Romance would be lost on Envy, and why waste it on someone who wouldn't appreciate it when it could be saved for all the pretty little surface-dwelling morsels instead.

Envy peered at him, seeming a little dazed and confused for a moment before following Greed's direction and slowly nearing the stained navy blue bedspread. Approaching furniture was something Envy now did with great trepidation, the challenge of managing to safely sit on anything terrifying him more than running headfirst into a war. Tentatively he placed on one knee, the wooden frame of the bed creaking eerily like a ship at sea under the suddenly massive weight applied. Envy scowled at it murderously as he settled his other knee onto the bed, the frame protesting, but holding up. The mattress seemed to be having a harder time though, dipping so far down on Envy's side he looked like a lonely kid on a see-saw.

Greed approached him slowly, his eyes fixed on his bed – his possession – waiting to see if it was indeed capable of holding up Envy's heavy weight while reminding himself that was a mistake he would have to make sure not to make. For all his wise-suggestion, Envy could easily crush him. Sure, he'd regenerate, but it would still hurt and probably spoil the mood. Or maybe not, Pride had taught Envy to be a sadistic little shit. Maybe he'd get off on that.

Envy was still staring in a somewhat overly fascinated manner around the room. It seemed so totally different with Greed occupying it at the same time he did.

"Greed" he murmured before he thought to stop it "Lets go somewhere else."

"Huh? Why? Where?"

"Sloth's got a stronger bed and he's out digging, and this place smells like ass" Envy replied carefully. In truth he couldn't place why he didn't want to do this here… something just didn't seem right about it.

Greed shrugged but acquiesced. Hell, the less stuff of his Envy breaks the better.

000

"There" Greed announced with a degree of finality, flopping onto Sloths bed on top of Envy. As the second heaviest of the sins, Sloths bed was made to accommodate extra weight, the strong oak bed frame triple reinforced with a number of thick struts that kept even Envy's heavy weight at bay. Not that he looked particularly heavy at the moment Greed noted, staring down into Envy's eyes. The smaller sin seeming unnaturally docile lying beneath him like this, his usually snake-like irises plumped out into heavy ovals and wild hair lying tame across the pillows.

"Hum" Greed hummed to himself, scratching at the back of his head. Something wasn't quite right about having Envy just lie there and take it, especially in this form, the most masculine and muscular one yet.

"What?" Envy demanded, leaning up and dragging his wild hair with him like an awakened kraken "Not backing out now are you, Greed?" He mocked, a smirk slithering across his face at the idea of an easy victory over his so sexually self-acclaimed elder brother.

"Nah. Get up."

Envy obliged, only to watch as Greed slung himself onto the bed with a carelessness Envy could never manage at his weight and gestured with a wave of his hand for Envy to re-approach.

"Common, sit" The elder sin explained at Envy's confused expression, flailing is hands over his hips in invitation.

"I'll crush you" Envy replied curtly, unsure if this was Greed's idea of a joke.

Either way he'd take it, or leave.

With so much running around to find a place to be the feeling that Envy had been so persuaded by before had faded. In fact, without their encouragement the smaller sin was begging to grow… apprehensive.

"Gee, I didn't know you cared" Greed relied in a sing-song voice. The challenge was out, now Envy had to do it.

The younger sin knit his brow with determination and slowly, carefully and unexpectedly gently settled himself over Greed's hips. He shuffled round a bit, experimenting with the placement of his butt and thighs, straining to find a position comfortable for his weight that wouldn't also break Greed's pelvis before a strong hand on his thigh stilled him.

"Envy, stop you're damn wiggling. Are you trying to seduce me?" Greed laughed good-naturedly. A sour look crossed the smaller homunculi's face; so much for being considerate and trying not to crush the bastard.

Having watched each of Envy's now very prominent muscles tense up in irritation Greed shrugged apologetically and began soothingly rubbing the hand on the smaller homunculi's thigh in an attempt to placate him. Envy certainly wasn't as relaxed as he had been when this had seemed like a good idea to propose. In fact, the smaller homunculus was looking a bit flighty, a good deal of tension had stolen back into his small yet incredibly dense frame, the taunt thigh muscles and twitching abdominals a clear give away.

"Pfft, this is a stupid idea Greed!" Envy suddenly proclaimed loudly in an attempt to seem haughty; Envy had long seemed to have this misconception that saying something loudly enough and boldly enough would make it easily dismissible. "It was just a temperature thing anyway, its cold today!". He turned and tried to clamber off, taking as much time and planning in removing himself as he had in mounting Greed before the elder homunculus snagged his fingers into Envy's black chest-piece. Although the top could be lifted up and off like a strand of hair, it was still very much attached to and a part of Envy's physical make-up, the act of having part of himself tugged at halting the sin.

"It's a million degrees and you know it, you're back's sweaty" Envy growled as Greed leaned up and into him, his back flush against Greed's torso as the elder sin's hands crept across the chest of the smaller one in front of him "-so you sweat now too, huh?" He whispered, remembering the barely hidden reaction the same thing had elicited earlier. He was shocked to discover it totally ineffectual.

Thankfully returning to toy with his prey's nipples was not.

Greed's experienced fingers – so much larger than Envy's own digits – pushing the bottom of Envy's already sparse top as high as it would go until it bunched around his armpits, exposing half his chest – and more specifically, Envy's nice new sensitive nipples to the open air, the skin on skin touch of his fingers and Greed's own inquisitive eyes.

After all, nipples seemed dismissible enough, but there was a lot of attention and detail in their design, in the tiny little pink studs that lined the circumference, in the softness of a nib at the middle. Envy had his work cut out for him. And what color? Pink seemed obvious for the homunculi's pale skin tone, but would he think it too feminine and choose a pale brown instead. Greed grinned to himself. He supposed if anything wasn't to his liking he could always just trick Envy into changing it anyway.

Wrapping his fingers around the now soft and smooth peaks to try and tempt them back into firmness proved without a doubt that they indeed felt real, and from Envy's reaction to his now much more assertive ministrations, they seemed to be connected up to his brain correctly. The smaller sin arched his back at the abrupt and no longer teasing sensation, thrusting his chest into Greed's firm fingers, the feelings previously built up inside of him apparently having stayed strong as if in stasis rather than having receded as Envy had originally thought.

Greed couldn't help but laugh, his chin resting on Envy's shoulder to watch the younger homunculi as he instantly began to come undone again in Greed hands.

God, knowing he was such a turn on was in itself such a turn on, and every time Envy arched his back like a drawn bow for more contact the smaller sin's pert ass nudged a little further into his lap.

He really didn't fancy Envy finishing after only a bit of nipple-play, but damn did the whole thing feel more exciting than any human woman he'd banged in a while now – and they hadn't even gotten started yet. True to an earlier assessment of what best benefited his skin color, the soft silken nipples in his hands where indeed pink like cherry blossoms, the architecture of the two small appendages disappointingly and yet arousingly perfect.

Damn, he'd got the nipples right. Well there was still the whole of downstairs to mess with Envy's head about.

Leaving one hand to play where it was, Greed's left hand slithered downwards, gliding with finger's spread across the new taunt flesh of Envy's well-muscled torso, each muscle springing a bit as the imposing hand glided across their surface before playing at the hem of Envy's loincloth. His hand was called to stall, rubbing lazy circles with his thumb around Envy's inward pointing navel

"Greed-" the smaller homunculi mumbled, not quite aroused enough yet to be moaning his name, but clearly on the road to being so. "- You promised"

"Yeah, I know. I don't lie. The skirt stays on, but the shorts are coming off"

"I'm not wearing a skirt! Uhuh-" Envy shouted enraged before keening in agreement, a particularly hard pinch to his nipple cutting off whatever it was he was about to say contrary. "Greed, I'm gonna'-"

"What? Not already Envy, common. You aren't even hard yet" Greed interrupted.

"No! You- ARG!" the shape shifter snarled, distracted once again "-Stop pinching me!"

"Haha, I'm sorry, what where you going to say?" Greed asked obligingly, waiting for the exact moment in which Envy opened his mouth before once again gripping hard to the little sin's sensitive nipple, laughing as the flustered homunculus glared at him deadly and totally powerless.

"heh, Oops"

"YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE!"

"Prove it"

"Asshole!" He managed to declare, red lightning zapping though Envy's small form to erase from the homunculus's body all traces of his shorts and top, leaving only his loincloth, socks and gloves behind, the painful sparking energy released causing Greed to momentarily throw up his ultimate shield to protect himself. At close range it wasn't very nice to take another homunculi's lighting to the face.

"Ah so that's what you were gonna' do" Greed laughed, lowering the sparkling silver shield that now coated him once more " Why didn't you just say that in the first place?"

Envy simply growled at him like a frustrated dog before snapping "Stop that! It's starting to hurt!"

Greed removed his hand from Envy's now bared chest, the thoroughly abused nipple revealed to have turned an angry red color. "I'll make it up to you" the elder sin soothed, running both his hands from as far as he could reach to Envy's sturdy knees up his creamy thighs until they met in the middle, the object of their attentions veiled to the eye under the loincloth's black cloak, but rather apparent to Greed's keen hands.

It was an interesting take on it.

Like the rest of him it seemed Envy had decided to make his new genitalia totally hairless, the smooth silky soft skin of the shaft unobstructed by the wiry hair that usually would adorn a 16 year olds base. Envy gasped at the strange sensation, his new appendage being handled by anyone for the first time ever – including himself- making his dexterous fingers grip hard into the sheets around him.

Envy made quite the sight tossing his head around like that Greed decided, the semi-limp but also semi-hard member in his hands given another stroke that made Envy wiggle and keen, clenching the sheets even harder in his white-knuckled grip.

Without much ado, Greed started slowly pumping his first hand while his second slunk ever further down towards Envy's balls. Well there was an abnormality Greed supposed, the texture of Envy's new sack wasn't quite right… but everything south of the boarder certainly felt fully formed and rather natural with that expectation, and fucking Envy only to come away with no dirt on him other the fact his ball sack didn't feel quite right seemed… pretty petty, especially while Envy continued to flail his head around and arch further up into him.

It was almost endearing actually. A real man would have been instinctively thrusting into his ministrations by now… but Envy was not a real man. The mating instinct that he still lacked despite having engendered himself seemed to leave the smaller sin lost with what to do with himself, the little homunculus clinging desperately to the bed sheets like a life line, with eyes tight shut, teeth-clenched and a faint blush dusting his face. He looked like he was going to explode… and not in the way Greed meant him to; more like the manner in which a stick of dynamite has a tendency to explode after it's lit.

"Hey" Greed called. Envy's eyes opening glazed for a moment before focusing on Greed's own.

"When I do this" Greed remarked, sliding his hand into position "Push your hips forward"

"W-wha'why?"

"Just do it"

Envy obliged, groaning loudly as he reaped the sensational benefit from doing so. Greed chuckled, the now hard member in his hand twitching in response as Envy's first hesitant jerks soon became confident whole-hearted thrusts, Envy moaning and groaning as Greed ever increased the speed for the apparently needy shape shifter.

Damn if he didn't look good like this. His smaller – or in actuality much larger, Greed didn't want to think about the real monster he was hand-jobbing – form seeming so tiny in comparison. Envy's athletic but still only teenage body almost demanding to be guided by Greed's own more experienced adult one. He panted as if about to combust. So desperate, so deliciously new to it all. He seemed so trusting. Greed supposed that was the real turn on. His heavier, more malleable, more hostile little sibling coming apart just for him.

Snaking his free hand downwards Greed unzipped himself, his own now rather aroused cock begging to be freed from it's confines as if it too wanted to get a good look at the wildly erotic picture Envy painted.

The pace they reached and stayed at was hard set, Envy's apparent ability to make intelligible words lost to the casualty of his pleasure, his toes at Greed's side curled up so tight they looked about ready to tie themselves in knots as Envy's whole body moved with Greed's hand, the soft feminine ass Envy had somehow not gotten around to altered buffeting against Greed's own recently freed erection. If Envy noticed or understood what that was it certainly wasn't shown. Damn, Greed hadn't even entered him yet and he was aching hard with excitement.

Lust had become dull and tame, predictable in her frenzy and motions and always reluctant to show her enjoyment, orgasming silently and never speaking a word of enjoyment or any others contrary to it. Envy was something else: throwing his head back and whinnying out his pleasure like an untried colt at a derby.

It was invigorating.

Envy was lost. All sensory information apparently now came from only one area. His cock throbbed happily in Greed's hands, the tiny ridges making up the texture of the elder sin's fingerprints caressing his flesh and setting his nerves on fire; the squeezes, addition and subtraction of pressure as that warm hand pressed itself up and down his new shaft almost unbearable in the feeling they provoked. A feeling so odd, so immediate and yet so frustrating. Like trying to trap a coil of spring into a tiny box, an awkward feeling similar to an intense need to unfurl himself nipped across his body, tensing tight the muscles in his ass and at the back of his thighs in almost painful apprehension. And yet. And yet. It just wasn't enough.

"Greed" The shape shifter whined out through dogged breathes, the elder sin's eyes drawn to Envy's near pained expression at the pleading note in his voice "Stop. Messing. With me."

A confused look crossed the avaricious sin's face.

"This as fast as I can go without ripping your new dick off"

The shape shifter gazed up at him bleary-eyed "But." He paused to give a particularly hard thrust into Greed's hand, as if affirming some sort of doubt "-Its not enough." He moaned with frustration. Stalling his hips Envy's black-clad hand released the bed sheets to rest on top of Greed's own busy grip, stilling the larger sin's movements…

"Damn" Envy cursed, his heavy breathing receding quickly once all motion ceased before dropping is head down to dejectedly. "I really thought I'd got everything right this time" He explained, his hung head drawing Greed's own face closer to observe his abruptly morose sibling. Talk about one fuck of a mood swing.

"You know, just cos you can't come doesn't mean you got it wrong" Greed counseled, a rare softness held aloft on his normally bold tone.

"Yeah, well something's clearly not hooked up right!" Envy snapped, the apparent sexual frustration and physical disappointment making him moody enough to disregard Greed's comforting manner and simply snap at him instead.

Greed adjusted his sunglasses, pressing them further up the bridge of his nose from which they had apparently slipped during their activities as he gazed downward in thought. Ironically now that he was too depressed to notice Envy had unwittingly revealed himself, the motion of prying Greed's obliging hand away from his crotch stirring the loincloth to fall limply over Envy's thigh – the organ that had been the subject of Greed's grip exposed and obvious.

It wasn't what Greed had been expecting. Neither huge, nor conveniently small, Envy's self-made cock was exceptionally average, if not perhaps a little vague. It was as if the sin had surveyed 100 men in their sleep and chosen the most average specimen available to base his length on, although it was perhaps a little abnormally narrow. The effect suited. A slim streamlined neat piece of kit that even as erect and straining as it currently was failed to look overly swollen or ugly. A pleasant rosy hue somewhat oddly blushing at it's shiny and softly-rounded head, but otherwise it did not seem abnormal to look at. Really there didn't look like there was anything obvious wrong enough to stop Envy from reaching release.

"Maybe you need a different kind of stimulation" Greed mused, taking the opportunity of the heavier sin leaning forward to strip off the clothing from his own upper body. Clearly this was going to take something more substantial than Greed had originally thought.

Envy's pants had long since given way to long sighs, trying to calm both his body and mind. The younger sin glanced skeptically at the elder, appearing somewhat wanton with his even more tossed up hair, disarranged loincloth and light blush dusting everything from his cheeks and ears all the way down to the crown of his straining cock, his chest heaving with open-mouthed panting and nipples hard as bullets.

"Greed –" He began with a groan, turning his head towards Greed's as he continued to peer over Envy's shoulder from behind, his smaller hand reaching down to wrap around his own length like he could coax the ache of his unfulfilled erection away with some mild handling.

"Sit up on your knees" Greed suggested, Envy following the order without thought or hesitation, too wrapped up in his own searing bundle of nerves to notice. Due to this, he also fell forward easily when Greed pushed him gently with a hand, only just managing to catch himself on his hands and knees as Greed apparently shifted nosily on the bed behind him.

"What are you-?" Envy began to question, turning his neck to glance back at Greed as best he could while on all fours to spot Greed sitting up on his knees behind him grinning suspiciously. The shape shifter's question abruptly died on his lips as a pair of calloused fingers made fleeting contact with his ass unexpectedly, before pressing down a bit further and wandering around the area, following the curve of his buttocks closer to his tormentingly stiff cock as if searching for something.

The fingertips of the avaricious sin roved the area quickly, then stopped with a confused hum from Greed's own throat before beginning again slower, retracing the path perfectly and still apparently not happening upon whatever was expected.

Greed cleared his throat, a little awkwardly from the sound of it .

"Envy. You don't have a-"

Oh… so he was looking for…oh…

"Yes I know!" the smaller homunculus snapped embarrassed "-I don't crap so why the hell would I bother adding one in." Envy paused momentarily, a bewildered look slipping across his face "And why the hell are you looking for it anyway!?" Once more he curved the whole of his slim body in a manner no human spine could manage to allow himself to glare back at Greed.

The elder sin's face was dumbfounded… it was true, Envy's body no matter what the shape made use of everything that was put into it, never needing to discard anything as waste, it had been a fact Greed and Lust had been mutually thankful for on so many occasions during the strange period of Envy's newborn life in which they had been his caretakers.

"But you don't use a dick either but you still gave yourself one of those?" Greed questioned, unsure to be amused by the discovery or worried over the conundrum that he had nothing readily available to plough his own now rather insistent organ into.

"I'm using it now!" Envy barked back, a red flush of humiliation staining his cheeks.

"Point taken." Greed conceded, raising the hand that hadn't been exploring Envy's hole-less ass to his chin to ponder thoughtfully. He could get Envy to blow him instead… but he wasn't really sure he trusted letting his sadistic younger sibling's teeth get anywhere near such an important body part. Damn, just like fucking Lust this was shaping up into another night of being left unfulfilled despite his partner's own satisfaction. Why where all his siblings such selfish fucks!

Envy blushed harder and dropped his head in shame. He wasn't sure why, but he felt humiliated all of a sudden, led so far on the impulses of his new body only to discover he'd failed to include something apparently essential that he'd dismissed as unnecessary. Damn fucking humans… why did they get to be made perfect when his own body was such a walking disaster. It wasn't fair. And his dick now ached so much! He hated feeling so humiliated. Tears pricked at the corner of his eyes. Greed was never going to let him live this down.

Greed chuckled at the younger sin's plight. He was embarrassed like a virgin who, having finally built up her nerve and taken the plunge, turned out to be too tight to be entered. Greed lazily petted the younger sin's back. To say there was no hard feelings would be wrong, as physically there where indeed hard feelings for both of them, but it wasn't something Envy needed to be awkward about, he hadn't done anything wrong and Greed didn't blame him for anything.

"You – er… want me to add one?" Envy questioned quietly, his voice throaty for a reason Greed couldn't see. The shape shifter was unsure if the suggestion was a wise one or not, but this was the first time Greed had been almost nice to him in so many years, he was reluctant to let it come to an end. "Or I can be a girl if you'd prefer that…"

"Huh?" Greed hummed, staring back at Envy wide-eyed and genuinely surprised by his offer. Envy had always been eager to please, even when he was steadfastly pretending that he wasn't anymore, but this seemed a little overly obliging even for him. He lent over Envy's back, trying to get a good look at the smaller sin's face, but every time he got into an angle to see Envy moved his head to face the other way, obscuring Greed's vision.

"You crying?"

"No!"

"Yes you are!" Greed accused, a soft amusement in his voice "Its ok you know"

"No its not!" Envy hissed, his voice taking on a sharp whine "Your gonna' tell everyone about this!"

"No I'm not"

Envy glanced back at Greed, a defensive glare in his glassy eyes from blinking away the shameful evidence as he surveyed him for mistruth.

"Why would I when you just have me the option of choosing if I want to fuck you in the ass or the cunt" Greed explained nonchalantly with a casual shrug, hoping to disarm Envy's embarrassment by ignoring it's existence. The shape shifter winced slightly but said nothing, still staring as if waiting for a verdict to be made.

"I kinda like the idea of pounding your tuna-" Greed went on to explain, resuming comfortingly stroking Envy's back to try and calm him down. Damn he looked so small from Greed's current vantage point. "I'm not much good at fucking guys anyway – I'm too thick ya see, most can't handle me" the avaricious sin continued with a self-satisfied smirk "But I do like this new body you've put together as it is" his eyes glided across the masculine frame Envy had worked so hard on, the coils of hard muscle and soft flesh, the anatomically perfect sculpt that had clearly come from an anatomy book and then been refined and altered with painstaking care to the sin's specifications and fancies. A thought occurred as Greed's heavy cock twitched at his own observations.

"Can you make yourself both genders at once?"

"Both?" Envy questioned uncertainly, his humiliation starting to ebb with the idea he may yet be able to redeem himself.

"Yeah. Keep this body as is, but add in a nice cunt – here" Greed finished, illustrating his suggestion by rubbing the soft featureless stretch of skin behind the smaller sin's unnaturally silky sack.

Envy frowned at the suggestion, like an artist told by a sponsor to add a small concession to their painting to make it come commercially viable, which they thought to be both ludicrous and contrary to their finished masterpiece.

"Humans don't have both."

How he managed to switch from hostile, to aroused, to soppy, to indignant in such a short amount of time was beyond Greed.

"Humans also don't have green hair" Greed lazily parried, earning an aggravated growl from Envy.

The first stirrings of Envy's transformational-energy zapped Greed in retribution, causing the older sin to quickly remove his hands from the younger sin's body as it flashed red with lightning, that then withered from sparks into non-existence once more.

Reapplying his fingers, Greed smirked as the velvety lips of Envy's newest bodily addition met his touch, the newly formed feature still warm with the lingering heat of the electrical discard used to create it and thusly causing Envy to jump a little as Greed's much colder fingers graced it's petals.

"Hah" Greed chortled, cupping the new opening with the whole of his hand, feeling the perfect hairless skin and soft pliable mound of flesh to get a better idea of its form.

Envy shuffled a little on his knees, the position having become uncomfortable quite some time ago, but also in awkwardness as Greed probed around 'his' latest creation. He was less sure of this one than he was of the male anatomy. He'd studied all of it in a book, both genders, both inside and out of the body. The male genitalia was so… unsubtle, everything out in the open, the internal workings of it much easier to comprehend than its feminine counterpart. So much of it was hidden inside of the body that Envy's grasp of it hadn't been as firm, it was so much more intricate … He'd chosen to continue to gender himself as a male for exactly that reason.

Greed grinned wolfishly from behind Envy. The younger sin didn't seem to be paying him much attention, which was sure to make his reaction to this even more amusing. Given how sensitive he'd accidentally made himself, Greed had to stifle his ghoulish giggles as he casually strolled his hand to the front of Envy's new vagina and flicked the pearl of nerves concealed there.

Envy squealed loudly and leapt out of his skin.

"Ha!" Greed exclaimed loudly, enjoying the near piggish noise the smaller homunculi had made before continuing to tease at the button beneath his finger with one hand and moving the other to begin leisurely pumping Envy's shaft again.

He'd begun to go a little soft, which wasn't surprising, but obligingly re-stiffened to peak condition after a few passes, the apparently overwhelmed and rather confused smaller homunculi biting his lip at the sudden duel sensation and pressing his bottom as hard into the elder sin behind him as he could manage, the abundance of Envy's weight unfortunately overpowering Greed's own and causing him to fall backwards.

Greed winced as Envy's sizable weight crushed down on his pelvis, the older sin's natural instinct to raise his ultimate shield to survive the crushing impact covering his hips, upper thighs and crotch with a layer of shining silver armor capable of withstanding the additional weight of Envy sat unceremoniously atop him.

Envy meanwhile noticed the situation and panicked, his legs immediately straining to stand and leap from the bed to prevent damaging Greed further. It was funny when he crushed people on purpose, but doing it accidentally felt terrible.

"Hey!" Greed exclaimed, catching Envy as he tried to jump from the bed by clutching hard to the pronounced hipbones on either side of the smaller sin. Envy glanced back at him confused but allowed himself to relax under Greed's insistent grip, following his hands as the older sin guided him to turn around to face him for the first time since they began this odd so called 'fucking' process, and led him gently to straddle his hips once more.

Greed grinned, the younger sin's expression one of confusion, fear, frustration and arousal all wrapped up in the oddly cobbled-together face that was Envy's own. He was going to enjoy watching his expressions as he fucked him.

Envy's eye line slid downwards, noticing for the first time Greed's own hardness.

"WHAT THE HELL?! They aren't supposed to be that big! I checked!" The younger sin accused, an incredulous look crossing his face.

"Hey, you're the one who can choose the size of your own dick, not me" Greed replied, a smooth grin at having been so inadvertently complemented slipping across his face. "I mean, you do know what this is for right?" He questioned, running his hand across the opening to Envy's core before poking his finger a little inside. Though dry on the outside of the lips, the warm wetness just beyond the opening assured him that Envy's arousal was still strong.

Envy shifted, unsure how to perceive the slight intrusion,

"Id have made it bigger if you'd told me about that though!"

Greed chuckled, gently pushing his finger further inwards, Envy flinching noticeably at the no doubt pinching feeling he felt as Greed's digit pushed past his ring of grasping muscle before continuing on otherwise unresisted into the vast cavity of what would in the case of any woman be considered their womb. Satisfied with the action of the minor tremors of the muscles tentatively squeezing against his knuckled deep finger he glance over Envy's expression.

He expected to see the sensitive younger sin's face awash with pleasure, or confusion, or confused pleasure…. What he got was Envy pulling a face, crinkling his nose up clearly unimpressed.

"Is that it? Go back to that flicky thing you where doing before"

Greed scowled.

"Of course not, women don't get knocked up by being fucked by fingers. Its not my fault you're kinda loose.

The avaricious homunculus unsheathed his finger, waving it in the air to flick off the excess juice now attached to it before taking his own cock in hand. Envy hadn't made himself particularly tight and the sooner Greed shut him up the better, all this talk was spoiling the mood.

"The only thing I want to here from you from now of is 'oh' 'ah' and 'Greed you're so good'. Got it?" The elder sin grinned, guiding Envy to kneel off him a little while he lined himself up, the younger sin taking no notice of what was going on beneath him as he sneered at Greed.

"Better do something worth while then".

Greed smirked; guiding the distracted sin back down towards him before in one violent upward thrust burying himself to the hilt.

It was amazing. Never before had the shape shifter felt so full, so utterly filled that the hollowness within him was being caressed by this, thick, heavy pulsating organ that slipped up and into him, dancing against the walls of his insides as they gripped hard in absolute ferocity – unwilling to ever let the welcome invader go. His throat went dry, the feeling of being so massively satisfied as his body eagerly devoured Greed's abundant length, the crown of the deliciously shaped head within him pressing sharply up against his temporary womb with a sensational nudge, his calve muscles, thighs, ass and abdomen all clenching so hard they'd implode

"AAAAaaaah!" Envy shouted, throwing his head back coltishly once more with gritted teeth and wide eyes, the feeling of something, massive, something thick and form fitting sliding up within him with a friction so tickling it made his muscles spasm around it – clenching it tighter as it invaded further, rubbing it up and down and electrifying his whole channel made something very low in his body abruptly knot – then pull itself loose in one oh so long and satisfying tug.

"Shit!" Greed gasped in surprise, a hot shot of cum splattering across his upper chest and face to make him splutter while the liquid-fire core of Envy clamped down all around him with exquisite tightness, pulsing and fluctuating with tiny grasps as the small sin orgasmed instantly… and rather messily.

Envy sat atop him staring at him wide eyed, mouth open, panting with a look of utter bewilderment, as if Greed had just randomly killed him, as the clenching of one orgasm and the splurging of another gradually relented.

"So what? A little bit of penetration and you totally devastate Sloth's sheets?" Greed teased with an easy smirk.

"I - * pant * Er * Pant * WHAT THE FUCK!" the little sin exploded, his expression still one of a being who had just been rocked at their very foundations. He glanced around, brackish hair swinging this way and that as he searched the room, expecting someone to come in to investigate his scream Greed guessed.

"Yeah… you were kinda loud"

"Shut up!"

Greed laughed, waiting a minute as Envy struggled to recollect himself. Despite Envy's best attempts to milk him, he'd held back the instinct to shoot. He wanted to pound into Envy a little, watch his weird little face pull weird little facial expressions, observe the straining of his muscles and the bouncing of his hair as he thrust into his core. Molten juices had now begun to escape the smaller sin's core, dribbling trails down Greed's own connected appendage to pool at the base of his cock before trekking onwards as gravity instructed them. And then their was his cum… Man…. It was everywhere.

Now that probably hadn't been natural, now that Greed got a good look at the amount and distribution of the spray. God… it was even on the ceiling. He'd have to break it to Envy that it wasn't supposed to be quite that intense, like the envious homunculus just tried reproducing a high-pressure hose and filled it full of semen. And how the hell did Envy even know what semen looked like? Greed lifted a thumb to his cheek to wipe off the globule he could feel sitting their, gathering it onto the pad of his digit to get a better look. It didn't look quite right actually.

"Envy, cum's not supposed to be like-"

"I know but I couldn't find anything in the library that said what it was supposed to taste like!" The shape shifter interrupted sharply

"Taste like?" Greed muttered, frowning somewhat before experimentally touching his tongue to the heavy bead of … something.

Greed's eyes went unexpectedly wide, a dark eyebrow raising in question. That tasted… familiar. Not like cum certainly. It almost tasted like… he ran his finger hurriedly through another splot of the substance that clung thickly to his chest, popping the collection deftly into his mouth to confirm his suspicions.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!" The avaricious sin trumpeted, a louder laugh never before heard in the history of their Father's underground kingdom.

"STOP LAUGHING! HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW!?"

"So-" Greed wheezed, wiping a tear from his eye "you thought it was a good idea to make it –"

"SHUT UP!"

"Oh man, this is too good! Envy the Jealous, the shape shifting homunculus that ejaculates vanilla ice cream? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"grrrrrr"

Laughing like a fool Greed gripped onto Envy's hips to stop him from trying to escape yet again and thrust up hard into him, determined despite his guffaws to find release before Envy made a break for it to slink off like the offended little bitch he was. Envy's growling was abruptly cut off by a sad keening whine as the full feeling inside of him was pulled out and removed – Envy's body trying to follow it and not allow it to escape but was being held mercilessly in place by Greed's hands. The elder sin chortled before forcing Envy to release a sharp grasp and jerk at the new movement as Greed thrust obligingly back in. A low moan followed.

Becoming suddenly (and considering the moments embarrassment very surprisingly) pliant in Greed's hands, he guided Envy's movement while thrusting hard up into the younger sins now wonderfully slick and sodden sheath, even his own hearty thickness being received with little to no difficulty by Envy's inviting core, the sin quickly getting the hang of naturally meeting Greed's own powerful thrusts with his own sharp counterparts. Each combined motion seemed to seat Greed deeper and deeper into the smaller homunculus, Envy moaning louder and louder each time. He was hard again before Greed even knew it.

Without any direction once the grueling rhythm that buried Greed so deep into Envy he was sure he was going to see his cock coming out of the smaller sin's open mouth had been established the envious homunculus added more to his own pleasure. Grabbing at the undamaged nipple with one hand while the other shot southwards to massage his dripping new clitoris the shape shifter seemed totally lost to the world. His head craned backwards as if eternally shouting to the heavens while the rest of his body bounced above Greed's, and his smaller nubile hands dexterously manipulated himself. His brow scrunched up with pleasure, his wide-set mouth bearing it's teeth so tightly clenched it looked like he where about to break his jaw apart, his masculine body straining, biceps taunt and thick while excited fingers played at his rock hard nipples and jarringly feminine clit.

It was too much visual and physical stimulus for the elder sin to handle.

Abandoning his grip on Envy's hips Greed's arms flew up to wrap around the other sin's neck, pulling Envy flush against him as he in turn arched into the younger homunculus, their bodies meshing in an intimate embrace, Envy's once more hard cock pressing firmly into his own stomach, and clumsily sealed his lips onto Envy's with an awkward but no less passionate kiss.

He didn't know why. He'd never wanted to kiss Envy. God knows he'd probably never again want to kiss Envy afterwards – but right then and there, it was the perfect act to drive him to completion – his cock throbbing inside of the shape shifter before Greed's hot wet load painted his internal walls, the sensation in return prompting another of Envy's own releases, the splattering of the curiously warm vanilla flavored cum-substitute spilling across his belly.

Greed clung to Envy, Envy's own trapped hands returning the favor by gripping onto whatever of Greed they could find as their joint orgasm faded, the two sins growing ever more boneless in each other's embrace as the franticness and intensity melted out of their combined bodies.

Envy pushed his button nose into the crook of Greed's neck, sitting down more firmly on him when the elder sin attempted to pull out; unwilling to be parted from the sensation of being filled while pressing himself softly but insistently into Greed as if he where about to try and absorb him.

Greed chuckled, smiling to himself as he felt the younger sin's hot quick breaths against his chest slow and normalize while petting the shape shifter's ever-odd green locks, dampened and warmed from the sweat and heat of their activities.

This had been… an odd experience.

Sloth certainly wasn't going to be able to use his bed anytime soon, and though Envy was as two-faced and fickle as a hydra on a diet, the avaricious sin couldn't bring himself to feel negatively, or even smugly about the whole thing.

He grinned at the situation.

It was a night of surprises; discovering Envy's own sexual greediness – the younger sin needing to be pleasured more ways than a single gender could offer to reach climax – and his own jealousy, as a single thought wormed its way into the avaricious sin's satiated thought.

He wished he too could cum vanilla ice cream.


	6. Steak

Non-Brotherhood-Verse

Relatively light Envy X Lust.

This chapter could be considered as a follow up to the previous chapter 'Sin'.

* * *

Under the ever-darkening night sky they stood together in silence, watching and waiting with the patience of the predators they truly were. A strange pair someone might note, if humans ever bothered to look upwards to the rooftops instead of forward to the horizon; a curvaceous, sensuous dark haired woman and a gangly strangely garbed youth perched on the side of the building like a maladjusted crow.

A light drizzle had begun to fall, neither abundant enough to be called rain or fleeting enough to be dismissed all together, but regardless of its strength it had indeed managed to soak to the bone the homunculi caught in it. Lust watched from under the small black umbrella that shielded her and her exclusively as the damp that had collected into real wetness on Envy's skin and hair dripped from the bottom of one of the long tendrils of fringe that flopped across his face.

His hair had been darkened by the precipitation and weighed down by the raindrops now running from it, his already scrawny form - made passable as healthy only by the tightly toned muscles that staved off his otherwise malnourished appearance - lending itself to more that of a drowned rat than a fearsome homunculus. She almost felt guilty about not being able to share her diminutive shelter with him… but guilt was a human emotion that was becoming harder and harder to coax out these days… and she'd rather be dry than wet, so she let him crouch there and drip.

It didn't seem to bother the shape shifter anyway, Envy's ever difficult to understand expression appeared lost in thought

Lust's work had been shoddy as of late, Envy reflected – the object of his ponderings shifting slightly at his side to readjust her umbrella. Dante was understandably upset – sacrificing so many of those worthless little red baubles to feed the woman-homunculus to a state that she would be useful in, only to reap ever-diminishing rewards.

Lust herself seemed lost as to what caused this strange melancholy that stemmed from nothing but blackened everything in the already very dark world of the homunculi, but the cause was no mystery to the shape shifter who observed her. Indeed, he had observed exactly the same behavior in the two 'Lusts' that had preceded this one. The ever-encroaching loneliness that accompanied being such a sin.

The first ever Lust had been a bitch – he'd killed her himself after he decided to stop playing nice with the other kids – so to speak – and so had been no great loss.

The second Lust had been different though.

A Xingese woman revived by her husband's ill-conceived alchemy after being raped and killed…

Yet the tragedy had made her all the sweeter, caring and still so human in a way very few homunculi were. She would always seek him out for conversation, or sing to him when he was angry, or brush his hair when he wanted affection. She was the reason he had assumed this form, a boyish body to perpetuate the adoring affections she lavished upon him believing him to be but a child, traumatized by the circumstances of his death and subsequent revival. It had been patronizing at times yes, playing the boy whom she could coddle while being truly a man beneath… but it hadn't been awful… so he'd allowed it, becoming immature in body and mind to perpetuated it.

It had been nice, Envy supposed.

But it hadn't been enough for her.

Despite returning the love she showed him as best he could, Envy hadn't been enough. He couldn't save her from her sin… her loneliness… her need to find gratification in the body of another. In her humiliation of lusting after men - the very animals that tormented, raped killed her so many yeas ago – she had chosen to end her existence… to go where no else knew, spit out every red stone in her body and drive herself though the gut again and again and again with a small knife (a 'tanto' if Envy's mind remembered correctly) until she simply did not get back up again. The Xingese certainly had some strange traditions.

He had been sad at the time… if he remembered correctly.

Yet another person had abandoned him.

Perhaps that was why he allowed this new Lust such liberties. He could impose the roles and behaviors of the dead Lust he so missed onto this new one as effectively as dressing his own form in another's clothes… but it would have been empty, fake. And so much of him was already fake. Yet somehow he still hadn't truly been able to curb himself from imposing some of his old behaviors onto the newest homunculus.

Conversation was one.

The old Lust enjoyed ridiculous banter about meaningless things, like the shapes of the clouds in the sky, or the fairness of the weather.

This Lust was different. She did not waste her words on pleasantries, but chose rather subjects that he could respond to as the man he had once been. Clearly she was suspicious of him, more aware of his appearance being a façade than the previous Lust and thusly treating him with caution… but also maturity.

It had been refreshing.

But now she was showing the first signs of longing… just like the second Lust…

She sighed heavily at his side.

She'd been doing that a lot lately.

For a 'lust', it was the first symptom, the beginning of the end – in which either she would fall so deeply into her own sin she would become so whorish she disgusted him, or kill herself before such an inevitability could occur. She'd done a good job of resisting the temptations of her own sin so far, rebuffing Greed's amorous advances, as well as those of the rest of any man who laid eyes upon her, but it was really only a matter of time.

What a waste, he'd rather liked this Lust.

They worked together on a near day to day basis now, the increasingly violent antics of the Ishvalan criminal who would once have been her future brother-in-law driving Dante to push them even harder into the heart of her dark designs.

Envy grinned. He was used to Dante's lies, her endless cruelty… such a sweet promise that she had made Lust, to restore her humanity… but the vow was as hollow and despicable as the woman herself. Yet it was not Envy's place to tell Lust this, nor did he want to.

He didn't consider himself a merciful person, not anymore at any rate… but if the hope of humanity was buoyant enough to keep Lust's head above the surface of the deep cold ocean of homunculus-hood then he would not ruin such a belief for her.

In many ways it made him jealous, though he perished the thought.

Jealous that Lust still had hope to hold onto; that she was still capable of looking towards the future and imagining a world worth existing in, a life worth living.

Envy was acutely aware that somewhere along the long line of his own sinful second life, his own hope had quietly died – so silently that he could remember no one event that had led him to loose it, nothing jarring had murdered it…

It seemed just like he himself wished he could do more than anything else, his hopes and dreams had gotten bored of living and decided to curl up somewhere out of the way and simply cease to be.

Or perhaps that was the problem. The only thing he had left to dream of, was death. Finally being allowed to go away from this awful place… free from his body that he had changed so much he could no longer remember what his original looked like… it sickened him. Free from his mothers eternal servitude… thankless, as it was meaningless. Free from the volatile mix of love and deep anger that fueled his hatred for Hohenheim… for only his continuing barely acknowledged love for the man could feed in the oxygen that kept the flames of his fury burning so brightly. Ah yes, to be freed in death.

He must have been scowling, as Lust turned to glance at him suspiciously, disarming him before returning her gaze to stare down into the street that they currently watched from a high vantage point on the roof of a building above.

Though having descended into watching simply the comings and goings of the disgusting little human wretches as they shuffled from place to place along the pavements and sidewalks, their original task had been to keep an eye on the Elrics… the same Elrics who had briefly surfaced to trot into the library whose roof they now stood upon and had not remerged since.

That had been nearly five hours ago. Little twerps.

Lust sighed again.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. The reasoning was obvious … or at least it was to Envy. He had been observing things on both larger and smaller scales for the better part of three hundred years.

A man just Lust's type had scuttled down the street, immaculate, well dressed, scholarly in appearance rather than macho, and like all immaculate, scholarly and well-dressed people, apparently very busy. He dodged through the crowd simply desperate to be somewhere, no doubt somewhere he thought to be very important and turned the corner at the end of the street to vanish before Lust's eyes. Another sigh slipped unbidden and unnoticed from her lips.

It would seem dragging a lonely woman into a street to watch the crowds of possible lovers, friends and associates dawdle past wasn't a well-conceived idea. Hardly surprising, it was one of Dante's after all. How unfortunate that through either simple genetics or whatever passed as the upbringing his 'mother' had given him that he was used to undermining her ideas with such incredible ease.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready?" Envy's gravelly tone asked the air, not turning to regard Lust as he did so.

The black-haired sin raised an obsidian eyebrow, narrowing her eyes shrewdly to glance at him as her abundant hair tossed dreamily in the wind.

"For what?"

Envy snorted as if mocking her, turning to fix her with an unimpressed stare while curling one side of his mouth upwards to sneer lop-sided at her.

"The stake-out"

"What stake out?" Lust demanded, her sultry tone quiet but no less unapologetic in it's crabbiness

"Dante wanted you to stake out the new restaurant on Fifth Street, Mustang's supposed to be bringing some new lady-friend there." Envy explained with a shrug.

Lust hummed thoughtfully. Dirt on Mustang, or even better, a potential love-interest to kidnap or threaten. That was something Dante could use to great effect. She glanced back at the green-haired sin, whose leering jeer had twisted into an odd little grin, as sharp and ambiguous as every other feature of his face.

"She didn't tell you?" He questioned with disinterest, breaking her gaze to stare back bored at the library that still had yet to yield their quarry.

"No." But that wasn't uncommon Lust reflected. She had the impression Dante had been sizing up her loyalty recently, telling her some things while leaving others vague and ambiguous.

Lust sighed once more.

Well at least a stake out in a pleasant restaurant – provided it was indeed pleasant - would beat Envy's evening of perching on the top of a building in the wind, rain and cold. For a moment she would have pitied him… but no amount of pity could help whatever he was.

"What kind of restaurant is it?" She settled for finally asking.

"5-star." Came the curt reply, Envy apparently no longer paying her any mind now that he had decided she should no longer be in his presence.

"And the food?" She inquired, if she was to be eating in such an establishment she'd best at least settle on attire appropriate to the meal.

Barely visible under the mass of sodden bangs that obscured his face, a strange little grin reluctantly curled across Envy's face.

"Stake."

000

The restaurant was indeed pleasant; decedent in a way that only the newest establishments in Amestris had the gall to be.

Using the name Envy had supplied her with she was easily admitted, the table apparently already reserved for her by Dante.

It was grand, white walls with sculpted columns running their length, small semi-circular alcoves made luxurious with a sea of crimson cushions joined by dark wooden tables dressed with spotless white linen clothes. A small stage served as a podium from which musicians played live music – wealthy grey-haired patrons enjoying the rare mixture of absolute taste and class by dancing with slow grace in the carefully planned out area the orchestra looked out upon.

The floor upon which her heels echoed happily was a beautiful grey marble, the expense and loveliness in the natural detailing of the stone kept appreciatively minimalistic under a thick sprawling ruby rug. Everywhere she glanced scented candles flickered sweetly, the aromas of high quality beef cooking or being eaten wafting about the air with sumptuous delicacy as the sounds of the small live orchestra and the joyous chinking of silverware against plates resonated from every table, alcove and corner of the room. Naturally, Lust was shocked.

Mustang had exquisite taste.

He had yet to make an appearance though, Lust noted - following a waiter so well-bred it made the homunculi wonder how he had fallen low enough to work as any sort of servant at all - to one of the attractive alcoves that had so caught her eye. The cutaway seating in the wall was a perfect vantage point to survey the room from. It was only seven in the evening though. Much like Envy, Lust supposed she was going to have to wait for her prey to make an appearance.

Under the premise of waiting for someone and the purchase of a bottle of wine Lust had managed to sit undisturbed for the better part of two hours.

"May I join you?" Came an unfamiliar voice from across the table.

She had watched him enter the restaurant. Watched him approach her, watched everything. After all, she was here as a sentry. But never had she thought for a moment he would actually attempt to speak to her. She sneered at him from behind alluring glossed lips. It seemed the longer she remained a homunculus; the more of a trial humanity came to be.

"I'll take your silence as a yes".

Uninvited and unwelcomed, he joined her.

The nerve.

He was not an unattractive thing by any means. Dressed pleasantly in a well-fitting suit back that drew her eyes down the slender lines of his body – probably some sort of academic – his dark hazel eyes sparkling playfully from behind a pair of thick glasses and mop of abundant but modernly styled dirty blond hair.

With a grace few men possessed he slipped into the seat opposite her own, smiling benignly at her as he did so as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

"You seemed lonely."

"I assure you, I am not."

He ignored her. "May I?" He politely inquired, gripping the neck of the bottle of red wine poised so readily on the table while gesturing to her glass.

"It's already half full" Lust replied curtly. This man wasn't the usual type she attracted. That confused her a little, but even amongst academics there must be some specimens more able to impress themselves upon woman than their colleagues, how else would they ever reproduce to create more little scholars, alchemists and academics?

"Or half empty" He parried easily, a mischievous twinkle catching the candle light in a manner that was not without it's own allure. He poured the wine nevertheless.

"How original." Lust mocked, distinctly unimpressed.

"What is that you want?" She asked, pinning down the attractive but nevertheless suspicious character with her unnatural gaze. He smiled up at her softly, his charming expression made disarmingly gentle under her own harsh stare. Never had she seen a man remain so calm, so utterly unperturbed under the homunculus eyes before.

"Truthfully – " He began, swigging a small sip of red wine back before continuing with an easy appeal " Nothing. Simply dinner with a beautiful woman."

Lust's eyebrow raised, her expression pulling into a frown. "I wont touch you, you don't have to touch me, and at the end of the evening we walk away in two different directions, and don't see each other again."

"And that's it?" She questioned harshly, her knowledge of how men tended to force themselves upon her 'beauty' not enamoring her the situation at all.

He yawned quietly behind his hand, nonplussed "Well I could tell you my name before I go I suppose, but nothing beyond that".

It was then Lust realized that for all this man's charisma and social grace, he had indeed failed to do even the most general of polite gestures and identify himself.

"You don't intend to tell me your name anyway then?" Her gaze grew ever narrowed, and his smile ever wider, but not mockingly so, adoring.

"You know, a name is the first thing a person owns, but it's never really worth anything." He leaned in forward a little, causing Lust to cautiously lean back "Besides, I prefer anonymity."

Lust sneered. This man was odd

"Why"

He sighed, leaned back and looked away, melancholy for a moment beyond words before turning back and locking his eyes with her own.

" It makes it easier to let go of things, when you don't name them"

Lust frowned at the statement, the human's words abruptly thought provoking. She no longer remembered her true name… why was that? And further more, why had she simply accepted the new name given to her by Dante? Why was she Lust? Lust was a word, not a name. Couldn't she have just as easily been Emma, or Jessica? Or any number of others… But no. She was Lust, Envy was Envy, Gluttony was Gluttony… not named, simply described. One doesn't need to name a kettle; it's just a kettle – just a thing. Was that why? Because they where so less than human, that human names where no longer applicable to them.

"I'm sorry," The man whispered in a hushed tone. She peered up at him. He certainly seemed sorry – in fact he looked rather contrite… almost understanding, although that was most assuredly impossible.

"Hum" Lust hummed once more. For all the man's congeniality, there was something undoubtedly off about him, and Lust suspected she might know exactly what it was.

A small smirk slipped across her plump lips.

"So. If I can't have your name, tell me about yourself then."

The man looked dumbfounded for a moment, as if struck by lightening before relaxing again.

"What would you like to know?"

"Whatever you'd like to tell me" Lust parried.

"Well…" He paused for a moment, stroking his chin with his finger "I was an alchemist – My mother and father are too" He added "But I had to give it up."

He shrugged, illustrating it was no great loss "and since then I've been a civil servant"

"You make enough money to be paying for the food of strange women in places like this on a civil servants salary?" Lust inquired. He laughed good-naturedly at her wonderment and confusion before elaborating.

"I'm part of a team that deals with Amestris's trash you see. It's an unpleasant job, but someone has to do it. "

"So." Lust prompted unimpressed "You are in fact, a garbage man"

"I guess" the man replied with a shrug and a chuckle.

He watched her intensely for a few moments, silence stretching between both the unwanted guest and the homunculus. The man eventually sighed; apparently understanding Lust had no intention of indulging him in whatever his silly game truly transpired to be.

"What do you think of the place?" he asked at length, gazing around the restaurant.

"A good place for a stake-out" Lust replied bluntly, hoping to throw him off a little. In truth she had rather appreciated the setting… before the luxurious nobility of it had been ruined by this gentleman.

He hummed at the back of his throat, turning back to contemplate her fully, nudging the bridge of his glasses further up his nose as he did so.

"I can see I'm not exactly desirable company."

"My my, whatever gave you that idea" Lust quipped with an unimpressed roll of her eyes.

He scratched at the back of his neck, accidentally roving his hand over a space behind his ear that made him flinch rather interestingly. Lust observed this, detailing it down in the thick textbook of her mental reserves. Clearly he wasn't used to having such short hair… or performing such sheepish mannerisms.

"How about a dance? Then I'll leave you alone." He tried once more, a last ditch attempt. Nevertheless the notion made Lust curious enough to ask,

"You dance?"

"When the fancy takes me." He replied airily, waving his hand dismissively through the air. Now there was a gesture Lust was rapidly coming to despise.

Intrigued enough by the offer to actually rise to her feet, she was momentarily given pause to discover the man who's attention she had been unable to shake was fixed squarely elsewhere, staring vibrantly towards the entrance to the restaurant. Quite a commotion had started by the doorway it would seem. It did not take long for Lust to identify the cause.

"Your identical twin brother then, I assume?" She asked coyly, not bothering to glance over as her would-be dance partner as his exact double stood fuming at the restaurant's front desk, loudly demanding how his table could already have been occupied for hours when he had only just arrived.

The man's bright and cheery disposition turned cold as stone, the same mouth that he hadn't seemed to be able to keep shut for all the tea in Xing locking steadfastly at the jaw. Without a word or a backwards glance at her he turned, and strolled with uncharacteristic calmness towards the fire escape. He slipped soundlessly from the building into the adjoining alleyway and vanished from her sight.

With a ladylike chuckle Lust sat back down for a moment, leisurely finishing the glass of wine it seemed she wasn't going to have to pay before following her 'date's' example.

The rain had only increased as they met the outside world, a fluster an buzz of confusion and angry voices as the man she had been conversing with tucked his head downwards into his jacket like a malcontented turtle and stalked off down the road.

With his illusion shattered, his act ruined, it seemed his bad-temper had gotten the better of him.

Lust stood there for a moment, watching him retreat with furious humiliation further down the dark street. She could leave him to it. Simply walk away and not mention any of it. Disregard the whole event and act as though nothing had happened… as if nothing had changed. But she didn't.

Puddles splashed and sloshed nosily as she trotted through them after her rapidly escaping mystery man, her long legged gait only slowing to a brisk walk when finally she caught up to him, the man making apparent use for his long legs to try and out walk her while still appearing blasé. But his jaw was firmly set and his expression was enraged. He hadn't liked being found out, or followed apparently as he sped up once more to try and loose her, but she remained swiftly strolling at his side.

She glanced sideways at him to savor this appearance while he steadfastly ignored her. He' d probably never use it again after tonight. He didn't tend to react well to failure.

"If it appeases you, I knew from the beginning." She grinned, not unpleasantly, in actuality she found the whole thing rather amusing – genuinely charming in intention in a way the superficially charming man she had dined with hadn't been.

The man scowled, the expression of another worn on the pilfered face of this gentleman he had copied to suit her tastes made almost attractive by the lack of falsehood. In actuality, the level of detail he had gone into for her sake was adorable. The perfect setting, with the perfect date who said perfect things, all tailored just for her. His only short-sight was that so much perfection set her on edge – most would have simply accepted there divine luck and been thankful for it, especially after he'd tried so hard. She hadn't even been aware he knew her that well. It was illuminating.

"You'll have to acknowledge this sometime"

He sneered, not even trying to play off the façade knowing he had been caught and continued walking in silence. The local watering-holes and restaurants of Amestris's upper-class district petered out eventually to reveal the tall trees and elegant fences of Grand Central Park, a clear indication from the geography alone that they had been walking for over 15 minutes in total silence.

This in itself was no great loss, or wouldn't have been were it not for the fact the two of them worked together most days… and any conflict between them often seemed to upset Gluttony too. Like many things in the life of a homunculus, this was just another brief issue to be sorted.

"Envy." She muttered softly, reaching out to entwine her hand in his own in a strange moment of gentility. He stopped feeling another tug at him, his pace slowing as he glanced back at her, scowling but also questioning.

"You did say touching was optional" she teased, sassy in her enjoyment of the shape shifter's discomfort. Envy replied with a near silent growl but did nothing but observe her, his eyes – still dark brown and human behind stolen glasses – darting across her features in a manner similar in movement but so different in appearance. Then his gaze drifted lower, glaring at the hand of the Ultimate Spear that had ensnared his own.

"It wasn't that bad" She smirked "-I wouldn't have taken you for a man who knew how to dance."

Envy glowered, but otherwise did nothing but flick his head to glare hatefully in the opposite direction, his mouth still firmly wired shut as if opening it would cause all the evils in the world to spill from it's maw. His brow had knitted into a tight frown.

"Alright" Lust conceded with a sigh "Just tell me why?"

That provoked a more interesting reaction, the man's dark blonde head swinging back around to stare straight into her eyes, but even from behind the chocolaty hue, Lust could imagine so clearly she could near see the pair of violet ones staring balefully at her in their place.

Why? He couldn't answer her why. To tell her why would be to tell her everything she fought for would never be granted. That her life was as hollow, meaningless and joyless as his – she simply didn't know it yet. To tell her why… could make her give up.

Without realizing, the hand that had been captive in Lust's own unresisting and limp came to life, gently gripping onto hers, grasping at it all of his own accord until they were very literally handholding

Why?

Because he didn't want her to go.

He couldn't save the pervious Lust. He couldn't give her the outlet for her sin that she needed – an outlet that would have saved her from being swallowed whole by all that it was to be lustful. But this lust was different. Maybe, this Lust could be saved. Maybe he could give her the means to keep going, for as long as she needed it. Maybe if he tried his best – really really fucking tried – she wouldn't abandon him too. It had become such a tiring thing to endure… and he did rather like her, even if he wasn't sure how to show it.

It wasn't for him, Lust belatedly realized. It was for her… it had all been for her. No expectations of sex, or commitment, or love… he had been playing the part of only exactly what he thought she wanted. Granted he'd been a little off base, but could any man truly be blamed for failing to fully understand the complexities of a woman's mind?

A small squeeze in reply drew his attention back to his hand that had somehow found itself tightly clutching to Lust's own. Damn, he'd shown off even more of himself without meaning too. What a shitty night. But then, subversion was a young sins job… perhaps he was getting too past his prime to muster the energy or enthusiasm needed to perpetuate such grand theatrics these days.

He sought out her eyes. Ready to meet her mocking expression, her laughing eyes teasing at his failure, just like Dante's would be in the same situation. But far from jeering, or unkindly, the pair he met where warm…. To an extent. To whatever extent of warmth a homunculus has the ability to both feel and project warmth. A small smile played at her painted lips.

"Change back" She bid him sternly, not a demand, but an empowered suggestion. It was odd to have to look up to meet his gaze; Envy was usually so much smaller than her.

"Why?" Envy challenged suspiciously in his alien voice. The warmth of her eyes filled him from his toes to his ears with something so unknown, but so familiar. He couldn't place it, but it didn't need to placed. It only needed to be feared. Warmth was not something he had any business feeling.

"I'd like to hold your real hand." The woman-sin replied, her fingers gently brushing over his copied knuckles. The feeling was an oddity, quaint, far from arousing, but pleasing nevertheless.

"Even in my other form you wouldn't be doing that" Envy muttered, quite cautious of just how dangerously close he was coming 'feeling' something in light of the situation.

"Then be whatever you prefer." Lust replied matter of factly.

This form was a beautiful specimen of masculinity yes; artfully chosen, skillfully recreated… but it was the mind inside that drew Lust's interest. Envy wasn't benevolent and sweet like Lujon, nor naturally-charming and good-humored as the man who had once loved her enough to attempt to reclaim her from death…but for the first time she could see Envy had something all of his own. She wasn't sure what it was, but it's cautious emergence now commanded her attention. It was something frayed, beaten back, ripped apart and mauled by years of anger and sadness until only a scrap of it remained, but it was something adorable. She wanted to see it in real context… or whatever context Envy chose to assemble himself into for her.

He pulled a face, somewhere between reluctance and bemusement before quickly glancing around.

Finding the area quite deserted, and boasting the cover of many nearby trees white light straggled momentarily across his body until the shape of his preferred form emerged from it. His hair was sickly green as ever, his jaw still jarringly wide-set and teeth despondently pointy. He was still garbed like a cheap prostitute and clearly quite unsure what to make of this all, but he had made a small concession. He was taller now Lust noted. His form now neither towering above her as the man he had worn all evening had, nor staring up at her with his usual boyishness. It was if without shifting anything easily perceivable, he had simply increased the scale of his body across the board, his proportions remaining the same – but overall somehow a little larger.

He glanced downwards once more to their hands, the heavy weight of his hair flopping about as he did so, as if wondering why they where still attached.

She followed his gaze.

His hand had remained large enough to stay wrapped around her own with little difficulty, but since assuming his chosen form the flesh that said hand was made of seemed to have dropped in temperature by a few degrees, and continued to plummet until it was even colder than her own – the difference enough to give Lust goose-flesh.

While her own skin was pale, his was now pure white, the tiny weak pulse from her own blood totally absent in his own… which was probably the cause of his lower temperature in the first place. Just as reluctantly as Lust's body had chosen to commit to being deceased, Envy's had acutely decided not to show any life whatsoever, his whole body a on a level of dead-ness that her own had yet to enact.

But then, Envy had been dead so much longer.

His hand adjusted in hers to reach across a little more of her skin, no doubt as subconsciously eager to soak up the meager but desirable warmth Lust created.

His eyes where half-mast, fixated so solemnly on the single point in which their beings touched that it made Lust's dead heart momentarily ache. She had thought her own loneliness was terrible. How long had his gone unacknowledged? And yet he had tried to help her… selflessly, expecting nothing of her and requesting nothing in return

Now that he was taller, his body less that of a child and more that of a man, a reluctance that had been present in Lust previously was lost. She couldn't save Envy. She knew that. She couldn't help him, not like he had just tried to help her. He was so far beyond that. But she could give him something to warm his bones. Something to remind him of the man that he really was under his corpse-like body.

She lent in close to him, taking him quite by surprise, and pressed her painted lips against the cold surface of his own. He froze up for a moment, doing nothing as she continued to snuggle her mouth instantly against his. Finally something kicked in: memory, or instinct perhaps, or maybe just the will to be lost in this strange moment of time, and the gesture was cautiously but quickly reciprocated.

Moving swiftly he placed his lips upon hers like an enemy cavalry division pressing down upon an unsuspecting outpost, capturing the base with no tactical advantage other than that of the element of surprise.

Was he truly foolish enough to attempt to engage her in battle? The thought amused Lust. Clearly he had no idea with whom he was dealing. Not anticipating any retaliation her tongue effortlessly slipped through enemy-lines to conquer his mouth while his attentions where devoted to staying latched to her lips. She pushed his body closer into her own, licking the cavern of his mouth and the softness of his tongue.

Lust grinned sultry and predatorily at his ever-serious expression like a love-struck hyena as she slid closer to him. She had a matter of curiosity to settle.

Roughly, she clasped her hands around his ears and began to rub her thumbs slowly around them in odd triangular motions in a manner all too effective against his sensitive scalp. He shivered a little under her ministrations… what a hilariously innocent thing to be aroused, the sensuous sin mused.

Scratching, rubbing and stroking his ears to various speeds and with various intensities seemed to cause a multitude of very different, very distinct reactions. Each stimulation sending waves of sensory pleasure to his arms, legs and groin with unbridled ferocity.

She watched his expression struggle to maintain neutrality, edging with ever more certainty towards emotions he had long wondered if he even possessed as he struggled to repress revealing any notion of enjoyment.

With some movements he would grit his teeth, while others made him shiver or squirm while his breathing escalated from the awkward pained sighs to an excited pattern of deep pants. One made him silently gasp, and yet a faster rendition of the same movement caused him to seemingly involuntary arch his body into hers. Pressing into her, she could feel the toned muscles of his torso softly pronounced beneath his pale skin, the light application of firm force as a strong thigh imposed teasingly between her legs and the hard rigidity of his growing erection caged safely within the unyielding confines of the tight black shorts.

She paused for a moment, considering the feeling of his excitement against her leg. While the lapse in the stimulation if his ears was brief, it was more than enough for him to regain his composure, slamming her back into a tree a few steps behind her, his expression shifting from one of pained pleasure to that of an uneasy scowl, growling lowly in her face as his voice demanded

"Never do that again".

He caught the unequal tone in his voice and pinned it back in his throat like a stray strand of hair, the uniquely strained tone in his voice suddenly reminding him of the throbbing appendage currently held hostage in his shorts.

She took his glare full on and smirked like a man-eating she-devil she truly was.

"Do not begin what you have no intention of ending".

She had been expecting him to scowl, or at the very least pull away leaving her both undefended and off-guard when he instead placed his pale hands upon the tree behind her, backed her into it and then slowly ran the length of his tongue up the right side of her face with both an intensity and purpose that had been absent during their time at the restaurant before reapplying his lips to her own.

The sensations of taste, smell and touch – yes he concluded, this way was undeniably superior to his attempt to provide her with a simple 'date'.

They remained in that moment for quite some time. Longer than any human onlooker would have the patience to watch for, or the lung capacity to reproduce.

After all,

A kiss could last for eternity when neither of the participants needed to breathe.

* * *

AN:

Envy's height is kinda weird. In FMA he starts being by being teenager-size in comparison to Lust, but by the end of the series he's as tall as Dante which suggests somewhere along the line he must have gotten a bit taller for some reason (ignoring of course the likely cause being discontinuity between key frame animators) so this was sort of inspired by that.


	7. Dragon

Non-Brotherhood-Verse.

Set within the 'Conqueror of Shamballa' FMA movie

This one was very much inspired by Aviators song 'Monster' on Youtube. Not that anyone really needed to know that though.

* * *

The alchemical light of his transmutation grew ever brighter, burning with wild unquenchable thirst as it swelled into the room, growing stronger, stronger, stronger, until it was so blinding he had to close his eyes or risk living with them damaged forever.

Not that he would have long to be hampered by such a development.

As abruptly as it had devoured them, it receded, taking with it his second son back to his home. A weak smile tugged at Hohenheim's lips. Edward would be all right, he could feel it.

With the opening of the gate the room had been evacuated, leaving it empty and desolate in the wake of the massive surge of power he had summoned forth by transmuting the dragon that was his firstborn. A dragon whose maw held him captive still yet as he bled freely from Envy's jaws.

The cold claws of severe anemia: the tiredness; the dizziness; all were setting in as he lay embraced in his son's mouth. Yet for all his usual viciousness, it was the odd sudden laxness of the dragon's grip that alerted Hohenheim to the fact he may well have succeeded in finally killing the homunculus that he himself had created so many years ago.

"Envy?" He murmured gently, unsure if he was addressing a corpse or not. He hadn't meant to take so much from his serpentine son, but in order for Edward to cross a certain sacrifice was required.

Envy had hated him, hunted him, even forced him to leave Trisha and the boys after finally locating him… but he was still his son, and his son's slighted feelings were not mutual. Despite all that the homunculus was… and all that more to the point he was not, Hohenheim still did not wish him death. No, the only thing he truly hated about his sin was how utterly he embodied his own failure, both as an alchemist and a father. Well, and that name his mother than given him.

Honestly, 'Envy'?

It was fitting in a wicked way; for it was the jealousy of his first pupil that had caused her to poison and subsequently kill his second. The fact that both students had been mother and son had apparently meant very little to Dante. Hohenheim regretted it terribly. If only he had been a little more attentive before his death… or a little bit understanding after his rebirth. It was all his fault. But the follies of men's youth where as irrevocable as they where inconceivable to his aged mind.

"Envy." He urged again, struggling around the syllables as he coughed up yet another thick crimson torrent of blood. How could his son stand keeping him in his mouth like this if he was still alive? Surely if the taste of blood was not enough to be now sickening, the overwhelming rot that lingered beneath from his doomed body should be enough to make even a dragon wretch.

Once more, a tiny smile –tentative and nostalgic – tugged at his lips.

When he was but a boy, his son always said he wanted to be a dragon when he was older.

Dante had scolded him sharply; told the little boy that he couldn't - that he would be an alchemist instead. At the time Hohenheim had merely laughed at his son's innocence and dismissed the whole affair. How ironic it was to remember such a conversation so long in the past now. How also amusing that after so long, through 18 years of human life and centuries as a homunculus, a distant portion of that desire had remained unspoilt within his boy. Fate really did choose to grant the most benevolent of wishes in the most malevolent of ways.

"William…" the name crept unbidden from his lips into a the air, the melancholy of a happy memory so brutally perverted heavy in it's tone.

Yet it was this subconscious uttering that finally drew response from the creature he had begun to conclude was deceased. A growl, angry but incredibly weak joined the escaped name floating in the air, a tiny reprimanding application of pressure from the serpent whose mouth he seemed to have become a permanent fixture of apparently trying to chomp down on him once more, but lacking the strength to commit to such an action.

"Ah. –" Hohenheim paused to cough up a little more blood, he was beginning to suspect his lung had been punctured by his son's last somewhat less than gentle bite "Not dead then?" From his vantage point hanging from the dragon's mouth he could just about see half of his son's scaly green face if he twisted a little. Though simple in theory, performing such an action in practice proved infinitely more painful and difficult…but many things most likely did when one was in fact impaled upon the fangs of a dragon Hohenheim concluded. Yet it was after this morose blood-hemorrhaging shuffle of man around teeth that he was able to see the eye on the side of Envy's – William's? – head that he was facing.

Envy limply thrashed his tail but said nothing. How delightful Hohenheim momentarily thought, that of all the lessons of his childhood, learning not to speak with his mouth full had remained so vividly imprinted.

From beneath serpent, sinew and green eyelids, a weary purple eye opened enough to stare at him.

Meeting his gaze instantaneously drew another snarl from his son's gigantic throat, the heat of the air and reverberations of his tonsils jostling Hohenheim slightly, but otherwise doing very little. He snarled at him fiercely, the soft flesh of his maw contorting, rising upwards to reveal the full bloodied gums and large sharp fangs of a beast at bay. He held the fearful expression for mere moments before relaxing his jaw, sacrificing the effort and aggression of pronounced snarls for low pitched threatening growls, allowing instead his piercing eyes to continue his campaign of careful, controlling intimidation.

He was tired Hohenheim noted, the apparent infinite energy of the homunculus whittled down by the Thule society until only the strength to crush the man in his jaws remained. Well, that and apparently viciously kill and destroy the entire building – but it seemed that hidden recess of strength was reserved for only the times in which they tried to dislodge his own body from his son's muzzle. Needless to say, after the first tantrum that his son had pitched as they tried to take his chew toy from him had near flattened the whole complex, the Thule scientists had concluded it was simply easier to leave the whole 'man stuck in dragons mouth' issue alone. After all, while he remained crushed between his son's jaws the homunculus seemed quite content to do absolutely nothing. He was no doubt simply savoring the taste of the prey he had finally managed to catch after pursing all the way to an alternate world and centuries of hunting. Besides, what else could he do? Pinned up on display like the prize of a macabre butterfly collector around the edge of the room's circular shelf.

"I'm sorry." Hohenheim chuckled bleakly, his son's violent one-eyed glare boreing into him "-I had to send Edward back, you see… I'm sure Alphonse has been quite upset without him..."

The teeth that had been locked loosely around his body abruptly clamped together, ripping into his flesh. A few plumes of blood sprayed disconcertingly from Hohenheim's body, the dragon's snarling snout twitching upwards at the corners into a leering dog-like grin at the foul display. The alchemist coughed horribly, the feeling of encroaching breathlessness bearing down upon him in a way that no doubt meant he was nearing his end.

Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say.

"William-" He gasped out again, the sensation of being crushed gradually receding to simply being embraced by teeth… but an embrace was still an embrace, and the homunculus had proven as reluctant to allow him to leave it as if he where still the golden-haired child Hohenheim remembered him as latched adoringly onto his father's leg in an effort to stop him from going to work as he trudged towards the front door.

"_Papa! Play with me!"_

"_William" _

_He smiled at the little boy, whose huge eyes gazed back bright and loving._

"_-I have to go to work, maybe your mother will play with you." He patted his small head, ruffling the wheat-colored hair until it stuck out at precarious angles._

"_But Paaapaaaaa!" He whined, "Mamma doesn't play good! Not like you!"_

In hindsight he had always been his son's favorite parent, and his son had always been his favorite pupil. Perhaps it was no wonder Dante hadn't been able to stomach it. Yet regardless of the bitter-sweetness of it all, it was a father's prerogative to smile at such a memory, and so he did.

Envy's eye narrowed, his jaw clenching a little in rage at being unable to stop Hohenheim's sudden joy. What the hell could the moron be thinking about to smile at a time like this! GOD DAMNNIT, he HAD to die!

With all his strength he bellowed out a roar like none other, it filled the room – bouncing and echoing around the walls. He'd wipe the smile from the bastard's face once and for all! For resurrecting him as …'this'. For abandoning him! For trying to transmute him! For everything!

With a flick of the muscular column of green scale that was now his neck, he tossed Hohenheim into the air. Not too far, he didn't have the strength to play with him too much, or the maneuverability to retrieve him should he fall out of reach, but enough to make the broken bleeding lump of bastard airborne for a good couple of meters before snapping his jaws back around him in his most ferocious bite yet. Bones crunched beneath the abrupt pressure – the sound of them breaking, snapping and popping out of their sockets truly symphonic to the sin – the taste of a fresh wave of warm blood spilling into his mouth in abundance ambrosial beyond wordage.

He kept his jaws locked for a good minute before finally relenting… if only to see if his attack had finally rid the world of his 'father's disgusting life. Hohenheim's body flopped limply and lazily around in his jaws like a bear with a dead salmon before a small chuckle started to emanate from the corpse's lips.

Damn. Still not dead yet…this body wasn't going to last much longer…but, he refused. He simply REFUSED! He wouldn't die before Hohenheim. He couldn't!

"You know…" The alchemist began, his chuckle causing small pools of blood to well up at the side of his mouth and dribble pleasingly down his chin

"…They never replaced you."

Envy's head stilled, ceasing the beastly shaking motion that had caused him to waggle boneless in his mouth. And boneless was indeed the word for it Hohenheim reflected. Just about everything seemed to be broken.

Somehow, with aching difficulty maneuvering an arm snapped and fractured near its whole length, he managed to wiggle it free, placing it delicately to rest upon the cold rough scales of his son's dragonoid snout. He smiled, fully, calmly, peacefully, with heart wrenching understanding and unbridled sincerity up into his son's watchful reptilian eye.

"You can't understand, until you're a parent…" he coughed. "But no matter what, your first is always precious…" Against his better judgment Envy stifled the snarl that he knew he should give, to end this strange sentimentality before it could begin. Hohenheim hadn't given a fuck about him. Or had cared enough to try and bring him back from the dead… and similarly cared enough to then abandon him when he didn't get back what he asked for.

"-The one who has to put up with your mistakes as you learn to be a parent…" He continued, his voice wavering and weak

"…But you didn't only put up with them... You suffered because of them."

Slowly and with great difficulty, he managed to run his only functioning hand back and forth across his son's serpentine face in gentle strokes, the eye that adorned it staring strangely at him, confused by the whole thing. Well, he couldn't ruffle his hair… so this was the best he could do. He hoped it said everything with gesture that he could no longer say with words… that 'Envy' would no longer hear even if he did.

_I'm so sorry, William_

He had never seen a dragon's expression go so blank before. Then again, he had never seen a real dragon before…

How strangely prideful it made him feel to know not only was his son the only one, but also that he had managed to achieve his childhood dream, as misguided and unfortunate as it was. He'd even managed to achieve his older ambitions too – ridding the world of his own father. Even if the ambition was somewhat detrimental to his health, what sort of father would he be if he were to disapprove of his son's dream for just that reason alone. He certainly could say that his son had the remarkable willpower for which he had named him.

And to think; Dante had wanted to name him Joseph… what a waste that would have been.

Slowly William's reptilian eye closed, as if needing to seal away the vault of his mind in order to properly soak up such a sentiment.

"I-" He began, before abruptly finishing with a deathly wheeze. He was done. And what could he have said anyway? What should his dying words to his dead son be? What words did William deserve to hear? Faced with such a conundrum, it almost made dying seem like an actual hassle. What could he say or do to appropriately end this relationship of father and son, man and monster… the monster he had seen in his son… the monster his son had come to be because of that. There wasn't enough time in all of eternity to speak the many millions of things he'd like to say… so perhaps he'd let action speak for him instead.

He couldn't offer William closure, but perhaps he could gift him with something else instead.

Something precious.

He had already bestowed such a gift on Edward after all.

Naturally sending William back to Ed's reality after him would only prove detrimental to both parties; even after his own death he didn't trust his firstborn to get along pleasantly with his younger brothers…. But the gate went many places. Surely there, in one of the gate's infinite alternative possibilities… there was a place for William.

Somehow managing to shape out the sentence he was no longer sure he could even muster the life force to pronounce, the near-dead alchemist spoke his final words to the almost asleep dragon that lay placidly around him.

"This is where we part once more, my son."

With sudden vigor, William's eyes burst open. His jaws sinking sharply into his father's flesh, as if fearing the man were about to make some great escape. But for all the agony it caused the beaten husk of the man in his mouth, Hohenheim simply smiled at him through his pain, seeing the gesture for what it might truly have been. A child gripping tightly onto a parent whom they had just found, unwilling to be separated once again.

Hohenheim bestowed upon his son's leathery hide one more affectionate pat, the last that his body could muster the energy to produce, and with a sharp clap of his hands thrust his palms back down onto his son's scales.

Light blazed as the gate opened once more.

The alchemical light of his transmutation grew ever brighter; growing until it was so blinding Hohenheim of the light had to close his eyes for the very last time.

As abruptly as it had devoured him, it receded, taking with it his first son to a new world.

A weak smile was painted across Hohenheim's deceased lips.

William would be all right, he knew it.


	8. Sayonara

Brotherhood-Verse

Mature: minor Lust x Greed lemon

Chapter carries on concepts presented in the previous chapter 'Birth'

* * *

Lust lay before him, spread wide and open – not so much of a physical invitation as a threatening demand that he entertain her sin, or else be punished for resisting. Not that Greed had indeed bothered to mount any sort of resistance against her, other than sexually of course. Yet there was no thrill in it. Thank God – or whatever was closest to it – that this would be the last time.

Greed as a concept of course can only be facilitated by the luxury of choice – one must choose to desire something specific to muster the avarice to make claiming it worthwhile after all. One could not call themself greedy when they took only the handouts given to them.

That was what Lust was. What had once started in the mutual pursuit of condolences and comfort had become a handout. An expected obligation, a partner he had a certain degree of duty to service, even if the desire was not there.

Vaguely Greed pondered with slick amusement, must this be what marriage is like?

Nevertheless as he parried the thoughts about his mind as his sister tightened beneath him, clinging to her climax with the viciousness one would expect of 'the ultimate spear' before she inevitably began to loosen around him once more.

Once sated – like the bitch in heat that she truly was – she would always turn away from him, waiting with the feral patience of a wolf observing a rabbit hop around the entrance to it's den for him to leave – the male of the species totally worthless and utterly undesirable now he had completed his task in pleasuring her to sexual satisfaction.

The tiny detail of whether or not he too had been able to reach release before being banished from her own sated presence proved – as always- totally immaterial to his ungracious elder sister. Lust was her sin; selfishness in the bedroom seemed to come naturally as an added bonus. Once more Greed had to wrestle himself back into his trousers with unpleasant resistance.

Escaping the flickering candlelight, scarlet bedspread, matching beaded lampshades and sensuous shag-rug that colored Lust's boudoir in bloody hues and trembling light, Greed performed his nightly ritual – shrugging back into his fur-lined jacket – adjusting his dark spectacles and slinking down the pipe-lined corridor's of his Father's underground kingdom.

Never did he return straight to his own chambers after one of his incestuous trysts, despite it being the closest room to Lust's own. Always instead would he make a single stop first, creeping to and lingering in the doorway of the so-called 'accommodation' that now made up Envy's personal nest…

Ironic in its own way.

Envy was the only one of their number who truly required sleep, and yet it was the single member of their group without a bed… or even a bedroom.

Lust possessed a room. Pride – as a creature who lived in all the shadows of Central – could in many ways call the whole city his lodgings. Even Greed, who's underground landslide of discarded possessions and revered belongings contained within four walls, a ceiling and a floor could vaguely be identified as his own personal space and resembled more of a room than Envy's own.

High above them Envy made his nest in a small hollowed out space in between pipes that looked out over the throne room, the ever-hot blustering metal tubes that made up the walls of the nook knitting together like a strange fusion between a steel spider web and a duct-constructed field mouse nest. Why he had chosen exactly that location was unknown, and somehow the logic of lodging a monster as heavy as a train above his head never seemed to come into Father's questioning.

The noise was terrible, the piping seeming to choose transcendental moments in which to suddenly scream with the release of built up steam like an overworked kettle, or heat to supernova temperatures that scalded the flesh from bone when touched. At some time or another Envy had clearly gone to some lengths to drag a rather ratty mattress in there. An acknowledgeable accomplishment considering the entrance to his lair was scarcely large enough to allow even Envy's own small humanoid body passage, let alone the fact that the cavern's mouth sat 30 meters up a wall with nothing but a vertical drop.

Envy had no bed. No chairs. No surfaces of any kind that he might be tempted to lean on and subsequently break. Envy was not allowed furniture – Father had forbidden it – the patriarchal homunculus having grown tired of the constant sounds of straining, splintering wood creaking and echoing around the hallways of the subterranean realm.

It 'begins to grate rather quickly' Father had announced, interrupted one time too many while planning the next of their homunculus siblings to be born.

Light slithered across Envy's ever-exposed midriff as Greed slowly inched the sheet obscuring the entrance of it's lair aside to peer through.

Apparently Envy's exile from the wonderful world of wooden-furniture also applied to doors.

With enough light to see by Greed nodded to himself in satisfaction, the sleeping form of his envious little brother the exact sight he had come to check upon before leaving for his next destination. He snorted in amusement. Even after all this time the smaller homunculus apparently still hadn't managed to kick the habit of curling up in on itself as tightly as it possibly could, as if it still where the palm-sized worm it had been born as.

Had this night been the same as any other night, Greed would have moved on, returning to his own tireless underworld machinations having successfully checked upon the sleeping sin.

This night was different though.

This night was THE night:

The plans and foundations representing years of work would finally pull together to create the flawless blanket he had worked so hard to weave ready to serve as the cloak under which he would disappear from this meager life – from Father's watchful eyes – from Lust sexual ungraciousness – from Pride's prying darkness and from the threat of like Envy, being lobotomized.

Tomorrow, he would greet the sunrise as a free sin. Free to live frivolously in any way he chose under the sky that they hid from.

Tonight was the night of Greed's escape.

"Envy" he called, his voice and tone neutral and casual, knowing full well that by inviting the light into Envy's den to find his sleeping form he had indeed created an opening for Pride to enter through… should his eldest brother suspect something worth listening in on was in danger of passing him by.

"Hnn"

Shaking Envy's shoulder's succeeded in only eliciting an unintelligent murmur from his lips; hiss barely clothed body trying to curl up impossibly tighter to evade his attacker. Greed to fell back on his trusty tradition of poking hard the ouroboros marking on his thigh before Envy bothered rousing enough to unwind and glare at him.

Patting and ruffling had no place in the life of the shape shifter whose mind and memories had been disassembled and reformed into this new Envy. This Envy reacted to challenge savagely. This Envy loved destruction and death. This Envy knew only how to attack, and be attacked. And yet… despite his attempts to hide it, this Envy still loved chocolate and still hated division, multiplication and being poked.

"Greed?" The younger homunculus growled bleary-eyed. How it hated to be jabbed there.

"Envy."

"Fuck off. What the hell d'ya want? Go away."

Apparently being awoken had not improved his temper or his ability to decide if he was curious or agitated by the interruption to his 'ugly sleep', as Greed had so affectionately named it.

"Envy." Greed pressed, a little more force entering his voice this time.

"-Tell me t'mora. Some people actually fucking need sleep!" the shape shifter interrupted, turning back away from Greed to lie lazily on his side.

"Oi. Listen for a minute, I'm trying to say something important here"

"Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow, right?" Envy snarled back determinedly, his voice quieter than normal for the usually boisterous homunculus, more serious undertones of muted pleading slipping into his words.

Unbeknownst to the elder sin, Envy already knew what Greed had come to say.

Greed could only sigh, adjusting his shades to satisfy the need to somehow twitch away the growing difficulty of the impending statement.

"…"

"…"

"…You're going, aren't you?"

Greed faltered. Behind his sunglasses, the elder homunculus's eyes went momentarily wide at the realization Envy had not only already predicted his intent… but had saved him the pain of having to explain it in words. Did that make it even harder or easier Greed stopped to question before replying:

"…Yeah"

With his suspicions apparently confirmed, Envy sat back up, twisting his lithe body to stare Greed in the eyes, the hauntingly solemn look in them near staggering the elder brother. Envy's gaze danced right and left across Greed's face, as if trying to take every detail down in the photographic format that was the envious homunculi's near infallible visual-memory.

"You'd better move your ass then" He finally settled for saying with a calm, quiet listlessness that suited Envy about as much as a headless bullfrog suits a colorful wig. "Dunno why you're telling me anyway. Isn't like we're close" muttered the younger homunculus.

Greed winched at the comment.

A sudden bright hopeful look revived the youthful quality of the shape shifter's eyes, an expression of joyous revelation flicking across his features and Greed knew what his little brother was about to ask… the one question Greed had hoped to avoid being forced to answer, for Greed the avaricious had sworn never to lie.

"Can I come?"

"Suuuuuuure" Greed sarcastically purred, their new natural dynamic of brotherly mocking and jabbing escaping from him before he'd even thought it through. Greed winced again, instantly regretting it. That one had been in poor taste.

"Really?!"

The shameless optimism painted across Envy's face made it only more heart wrenching, but like pulling out a sword from the gut: the quicker it was done, the quicker the wound could begin to close.

"No, Envy."

He fixed the younger with a meaningful stare. Envy had to know - needed to understand - that he couldn't follow… even if it hurt.

For Greed to be free, Envy had to stay behind.

"You know you can't come."

And just like that, the deed was done.

"…"

"…"

"…Pft, Yeah-" agreed Envy crisply; all evidence of the gleeful expression he had worn only seconds ago sinking beneath what appeared to be the surprising quick onset of somber acceptance. " –I didn't think so…"

Father would not miss Greed, neither as a son nor a weapon.

Lust's claws where just as capable as his own diamond-tipped talons and the second son's impenetrable epidermis meant little when any wounds sustained by a homunculus would heal in mere seconds anyway.

Envy was not so lucky.

The strange circumstances of it's birth and the staggering potential of its shape shifting abilities meant it would never be allowed to leave Father's side. It was too valuable to lose, or let loose.

Yes indeed, for Greed to be free… Envy had to stay behind

It was Greed's fate to be greedy enough to take this opportunity now that Father's new shape shifting homunculus could easily shoulder his half of the work, and sadly it was Envy's fate to be envious of that same freedom, claimed without regret at hiss own expense.

Only, it was not without regret.

Greed took a final secretive look at the younger 'male' who stared forlorn with eyes downcast at the floor.

If lady luck smiled down on Greed they would hopefully never see each other again. He knew this Envy well enough to predict that though the wound his departure might inflict would heal, it would scar too. Envy's capacity for cruelty and resentment – much like his unique capacity for affection and generosity – was much greater than the other homunculi. When they met again, they would be made enemies by his own bitterness.

Yes, tonight was the night of Greed's escape…

And though they may always be 'siblings', this would also be the last night the younger and elder homunculi were…

'brothers.'


	9. Soul

Brotherhood-Verse

* * *

A tiny little thing,.. It fluctuated between talking non stop in whatever shrill wavering façade of a voice it's now tiny vocal cord and lungs could output, and total silence; ranting, raving deranged but impassioned for hours on end in awkward squawks on a variety of subjects never straying from the single theme of attempting to pin down and latch onto whatever fears lay darkest at Mei's core.

You'll never save your clan! You're weak! Hell all, humans are weak, but com'on, your just a little runt. A little girly runt at that! Don't they drown girls at birth in your country? Obviously didn't work on you huh? What was it? Pathetic shit-shoveling mother and father just too all-out retarded to remember to tie up the sack when they tossed you in the local river? You're country's pathetic! Your pathetic!..."

And so it would continue. Then 'he' would stop, and he would fall into what she could only assume to be silent complacence for sometimes days at a time before managing to rebuild the will to continue fighting –even only on a verbal level- in his insignificant little body.

The unending torrent of slander and cruelty that spewed from Envy's jawless maw - if spoken from the mouth of her family or friends - would have cracked her to the core.

But not from this little thing.

This strange little green worm, who's voice was genuinely so pitiful even he seemed to despise it.. Who had been rendered hopelessly and completely ineffectual by all the might and ferocity of an abandoned empty jam jar, and who's form was so small a mere straw poked haphazardly through the cork of the jars lid was sufficient to funnel enough oxygen to sustain his life.

"Envy." She began, cutting off his latest rant mid-sentence. Surprisingly the sin actually fell obligingly silent. "No matter what you say, I'm not letting you out of this jar."

Envy huffed a little to himself before leaning back to sit against his jammy-prison, each of his tiny eight arms crossing together in a petulant tangle of limbs.

For any creature of human-like intelligence such a fate was both pitiful and deplorable. The culturally conditioned sense of honor housed within Mei resolute in its push to kindly end the miserable little thing's life was only held back by the pressing need for the secrets of immortality; who's monumentous proportions seemed difficult to believe could be housed in Envy's miniscule and defenseless body.

Everything he said could be ignored for this reason, just as her own attempts to draw out a conversation that didn't explore her imminent failure and the death of her kin didn't seem to be heard at all by Envy, who seemed to obsessed with his own thoughts to bother listening to hers…

Apparently they intended to study him for the secret to eternal life or some such human rubbish.

That didn't sound good to Envy. Not good at all.

Fools. He didn't have eternal life, hell, he'd died tones of times and he could sure as hell be killed on a more permanent basis of any of them really thought to apply themselves to the task. Especially now, as the loathsome little worm he was. Damnit, he hated this!.

In Envy's somewhat sizable experience in lab 5, the process of 'studying' for the 'secrets' of anything was usually carried out by patriotic, overly keen scientists that as much as they wanted to complete their appointed tasks, where unlikely to do so without first attempting to kill, probe or otherwise brutally maim their test subjects. Naturally in his current predicament the only thing they could probably find to probe would be his 'mouth', which in its own way was a small mercy, but this in itself would most likely translate to the emphasis being redirected onto the 'maim' and 'kill' facets of the job description.

Being chopped up like a carrot… or squished like grape.

Understandably it wasn't an experience he was looking forward to.

"What will they do to me?"

An uncommon note of concern edged at the corners of his question that drew Mei's eyes down to the denizen of the jar.

No sooner had the question been asked than Mei cocked an easy smile; the placating, deceiving beam of a girl who truly meant no harm.

"Sorry, Envy. I don't know" the girl replied, her high voice uncompromising yet apologetic, as if bracing herself for his reception.

Overly large eyes narrowed, a gaping hole of a mouth no longer discernable or comprehensible as lips attempting to pull itself into the scowl he would have worn on his human-face…where he still in possession of it.

"You don't know OR you wont tell me? They're going to dissect me aren't they!" The squeaky and now somewhat angry little green worm demanded.

"How utterly human to skirt around such details!" The sin screeched, apparently not too pleased with the lack of information regarding his imminent fate. "Your all like rats edging around the corners of a trap! Think you've got it all figured out but you know NOTHING!"

He shuddered.

Although the front of the jar that faced out into the world was covered by a small curtain of cloth, the back remained exposed to Mei as she cradled it against her chest, not missing the small but near electrical shiver that wriggled from the crown of Envy's head to the tip of his curly little green tail.

With the ease of strength that his once humanoid fingers could now only dream of, the cork lid of the glass jar he had come to inhabit for the last few weeks was sharply twisted and pulled free of the prison's opening, allowing the small, chubby still child-like hands of Mei to reach in and like a crane snatching a fish from a free-flowing river, clasp tightly around his tiny tail and yank him from the confines of his sticky-sweet jam encrusted prison.

For a brief, unexpected and altogether overwhelmingly wholesome moment he was free. Free of the scent of strawberrys that by now must have permeated through his skin and into his very existence. Blissfully free… even while his top-heavy body swung slightly upside down, suspended high above the ground in the girl's tiny fingers.

"What the HELL!?" screeched the homunculus now once more trapped; this time not within the glass but between Mei's own fingers. The disproportionately large voice's pure outrage resonated clearly against the approaching walls of the last town clinging to the boarder of the vast expansive wasteland that separated Amestris – his home - if homunculi where able to attach such a noun to anything, from the alien country beyond.

Had she seen through his 'cunning' ploy? Had she simply decided to do away with him here… now, moving to slice both him, and the philosopher's stone at his core in half for a clean, experiment-free death? How pleasant of her. Stupid merciful human twerp!

Ignoring her irate but otherwise harmless prisoner, Mei's attention stayed firmly fixed upon the still squirming sliver of green held gently hostage between her finger and thumb, it's huge eyes staring dazed and wide-eyed at her. Strange Mei thought; without the malice, the hostility; with only the shock of fragility the expression it half-wore was almost… innocent.

She smiled at him… pityingly. An expression that made the sin's eyes narrow with hatred and body tense with fury. No fucking pathetic human had the right to pity him!

"Envy." She cooed quietly. "Even if I put you right here on the ground… you'd never make it anywhere" She reasoned, apologetic once more. He was so miniature, so frail.

Purple irises flicked back and forth across the scene that was the near deserted town that sat before them.

"There's no one here to bite onto" Mei continued softly "and you can't walk home on your own…" She sighed, hoping to reason with him but only noticing the flicker of hostility grow stronger in the depths of his eyes."-Even if you hid, I can track your soul."

Envy eyes glared searchingly into hers, analyzing her for weakness she suspected. Her words were true… and it was likely no one was more acutely aware of this than the sin himself. With a final glance at his surroundings his eyes seemed too blink slowly with rapidly on setting melancholy. Little beangirl had won this round. But he'd feel freedom yet! She could count on that, and when he did he'd make sure to rip her heart out and laughing at the shocked look on her face as he waved in front her!

Beaten, but unwilling to admit defeat the homunculus squeaked out a 'humph!' before muttering under his breathe something that sounded suspiciously close to 'homunculi don't have souls' and falling silent.

With a sigh Mei released her grip on the belligerent homunculus, sending the tiny mass plummeting back into the depths of the jar.

"Yes, You do."

If only he didn't have a soul, consigning him to such a fate would be so much easier.

But he did.

They all did.

It was the only component that Mei would later come to realize separated homunculi from mannequin soldiers… after all, both where powered by philosopher's stones – the crystalized souls of many thousands of innocents – yet whereas their mannequin equivalents where hollow, base and thoughtless, the homunculi where individuals, as demonstrative of personality as any human.

Finally, on the cusp of stepping across the threshold of the town's outskirts and into the desert beyond, desperation encouraged the worm to try a new tactic:

Caustic words and vile insults replaced with honeyed suggestions, sweetened promises and guilt-inducing jeers.

The girl soaked them up like a sponge, perhaps suspicious – it was hard for Envy to tell through her perpetually clueless expression - but somehow, someway she swallowed it all down and within only minutes of employing his newest technique after days of tiring out it's predecessor the girl was convinced utterly and without question to return to Amestris.

It was a success Envy took no pride in, hell for crap's-sake – how damn gullible was this little runt? Screw attacking her family honor and all that shit. Here he was trying to out-smart them and all he'd had to do in the freak in' first place was out-dumb them instead. Wretched. Pathetic. Mindless. Meddlesome. Humans!

Still, for once since traipsing up north and being subsequently frozen, unexpectedly blown up and utterly beaten, things where looking up for Envy…

For sometime on the road to Amestris following the strange comment a number of questions had drifted back and forth across the forum of Envy's mind. But as the sight of Central filled his tiny yet far too large bug-eyes, such thoughts became inconsequential. He had bigger fish to fry, or humans to pulverize as was more appropriate for a homunculus.

And so it was the homunculus continued to live, to regain the human form he had lost, only to be burnt to death more times than pain could count, to finally yank the crimson stone from his chest with his own shaking hands, watching it burst before his very eyes, neither the homunculus nor its heart able to muster the urge to keep living in the face of its crushing defeat.

Envy never thought of or asked what would become of his 'soul'.

Such concerns where immaterial to the mercifully and permanently deceased.


End file.
